


Dominion

by tortillastew



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Approach to Dragonborn, Alternate approach to pretty much everything, Arranged Marriage, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Mixed Race, Multi, Skyrim Main Quest, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:11:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortillastew/pseuds/tortillastew
Summary: Isra journeys to her childhood home of Skyrim following her brother's death in the Civil War despite knowing she cannot return to her life in Hammerfell. Though her skills as a socialite do not translate to Skyrim's harsh, simplistic life, she seeks honor on her own terms in the shadow of her sister, the Dragonborn





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reworking of my piece Ascension, which I posted in 2015.

Sheltered from the wind under velvet too thin, she made a note to wait until spring to go home or buy a fur. With the vicarious winds, she wasn’t sure spring ever arrived, and with the lightness of her purse, she wasn’t sure she had enough for fur. Chapped lips murmur prayers familiar and foreign to her voice. The air sharpens. Flames roll along the contours of her brother, reducing him to ash and setting apart the body from the spirit.

  
His spirit had warmed her in life, yet now it was whipped away by howling winters. The priestess threw handfuls of incense onto the flames, as if the notes of flowers and heavy amber could cover the raw smell of death and metal.

“..to throw ourselves into the brunt of battle like our brave fallen, our brother Haraldr! To see the light, the hope, in these ending times!” The orange robe bobs with her exalting. It was a true shame that the funeral must be so austere. It betrayed the hope the priestess claimed as the surface ice was tore from its underlying snow, cutting at the face before melting on warm cheeks. How foreign her home was to her, how ill suited she was to the snow, to the very verses she muttered now. “May Talos guide his soul,” a reverent cadence thickens.

Her sister’s hand curls around their father’s shoulder. Isra studies them, and then trails back to her brother on the pyre, “Where is Mehra?”

The priestess stutters, “And may his soul find…”

“Where is she?”

“Isra!” The father hushes, but the sharpness is lost within a bristly beard camouflaged in the snow.

Crossing her arms across her chest, she speaks with an authority birthed from rage, “She should be here. The child is at the head of the father.” The scent of Juniper and Jazbay assaults the eyes before the nose. Tears of anger, sadness, and irritation spill onto Isra’s cheek. “Haraldr would have her at his head.”

Snow crunches as he shifts, the wreath of red berries grasped tightly by papery, white hands. “I won’t have you at my head.”

Her sister, Hjorta, instantaneously grabs the wrist of her father. “Not today,” her demeanor becomes her voice, that ripples with the ancient power Hjorta wielded gracefully.

The priestess swallows, “When he descended from the mountains…” Droning on, the young woman is uncomfortable, but competent in her scripture. A thick hand curls around the blue velvet covering her shoulder and she darts to the Jarl. His hand drops to his side, sympathetic to the embarrassment she suffered, but only able to offer a quick moment of misplaced compassion. He drapes her in his fur, if not to prevent the distractions of her shivering.

“I don’t suppose you can do much when you’re dead,” Isra retorts, though quietly so. Such negativity betrayed the spirit of her brother. She felt true loss when she gazed on the body of a brother that took the title of soldier, a man who lived with no concept of limit. Isra knew that Haraldr was not here.

It is not long before the afternoon sun lulls into the horizon, the flames mere embers crackling below the remains on the pyre. The priestess works silently, sweeping the ashes and praying. Isra finds solace in the priestess’s commitment to an illegal act of worship. The ritualism with each stroke of the rake, drawing parallel lines in the dampened ashes over her brother. Charred bones devoid of structure crumble into one another, forming a heap at the base of the pyre. The priestess Isra came to know as Jora pours a pungent oil atop the remains, its properties allowing the fire to burn bright blue and liquify Haraldr’s bones. Jora hums, ever so glancing up to the woman in sodden velvet, perched on a log. Isra, as Jora came to know her. If Isra wasn’t pitiful, shivering in ill attire, Jora wasn’t sure what Isra was other than disgraced by her father. “I have another snowberry wreath for mourners,” Jora breaks the customary silence.

Isra shakes her head, scared over ears dusting against her hair, “I have made and held too many wreaths. They do not help.”

“Some of us find comfort in our traditions,” Jora narrows her eyes, but not so much as to seem unfriendly. Though a priestess serving the God of War, pain was impermissible to Jora. “Perhaps you will find comfort in knowing he fought for a righteous cause.”

Isra snorts, running her fingers over the chips in the polish coating her nails. The snort builds into a slight chuckle which causes her breath to catch in a moment of weakness. “How many soldiers do you bury a day, Jora? Is a righteous cause worth an entire generation being sent to slaughter.”

Jora nods, she’d heard this from many before. “I can’t bury all of them. I bury those that I can for as long as I can. It’s what I believe in. I am honored to have buried Haraldr.”

Isra doesn’t answer Jora immediately, finding the conversation never quite satisfied her. Townspeople occasionally filtered to the small outcrop by the forest to honor her brother’s life and sacrifice, throwing snowberries onto the pile and reciting some prayers with Jora, it was always the same amount of snowberries. If someone hadn’t set up a table in the center market selling funerary supplies, she was sure the temple had. Some townspeople spoke to her, mostly the Dunmer. Come to think of it, she hated the people clad in the brown leathers and blue sashes that appeared only to honor the cause. Her brother was much more than a band of nationalistic, narrow-minded, ignorant Nords.

Mehra had come from Narsis with her mother’s friend at the age of thirteen, stuck between childhood and the trials of a woman in a cold place, much too cold and sick from the journey. It was through a shared connection and an attachment to the potential of the child that compelled Haraldr, merely six years older than her, to take her as a ward. To nurse her back to health, to pay for her schooling and board. Mehra lived under his roof and thrived there, able to partake in the luxuries reserved for Nord nobility in Windhelm. Of course, this was not without recourse, but Haraldr did not care for the approval of his contemporaries, which endeared Isra to this deceased brother rather than the other deceased brother. This care for the Dunmeri girl emboldened Haraldr, and he took up repairing the Gray Quarter in his spare time, advocating on behalf of elves shunned to the edges of the society.

By this merit, it also confused her as to why he would join the rebellion, but she supposed she missed many details in her five year absence.

“Good evening, muthsera,” A weathered, but otherwise healthy Dunmeri man smiles, tossing aside the snowberries in exchange for a hug.

“Belyn,” Isra smiles, accepting the embrace.

“You’re freezing,” Belyn frowns, “How long have you been here?”

“Since this morning. I should go home.”

Belyn nods, cutting off Isra with her mouth half open, “Mehra was looking forward to seeing you when she was sent to the college. Where is your home now?”

Isra is warmed by the fact the Belyn knew were Mehra was and that Mehra was in the best of all possible places. “Haraldr sent her away?” Isra beams, her hands trembling with an unfamiliar happiness.

“Yes, he did. What happened to you, though? Didn’t Skjorheim send you to the college?”

The woman Mehra crossed the border with had perished, but the sick Dunmeri girl had a certain fire insisting she stay alive. Haraldr at the time was quite involved in the Gray Quarter as he prepared to become a healer, before the war and before he was on the pyre. “I never made it to the college.”

“No,” Belyn shook his head, “Where have you been all this while?”

  
Isra struggles with where she had been, as Belyn was genuinely concerned, Jora stopped raking over the ashes. To speak truth would bring shame on her father as he had brought shame on her. Tempting, but it would look like a woman desperate to retaliate. “I’ll tell you soon enough.”

She shuffles stiffly to the city after the coals go cold and she ceremoniously smudges the ashes on her forehead with her thumb, she’s reminded of the tall blocks that tower above any trial the soul could surmount. These walls, formidable and ancient, compressed personal will. It seemed as if the walls of Windhelm poked at the sky itself with clouds of fog draping down their height, barely clouding the crest of the bear. Stars were invisible, but yet, a few persisted through the thick clouds. The crest of the Thief gave way to the periphery of the Ritual, the constellations suggesting the beginning of a new year. Before she left her home, the soft whispers and suggestions for planning the Day of Lights had settled among nobility and commoners alike. “My condolences for your brother,” a guardsman bows his head in reverence.  
“

Thank you,” Isra returns the pleasantry, albeit, reluctantly. Yet again, this war had claimed another member of her family. She shrugs into the fur of the jarl, a musk rising from the fibers while she made a note to return the garment when she could.

Her legs take her to Valunstrad, multi story wooden homes defying the impersonality of stone walls. Windows glowed shades of orange and yellow, the shadows of the panes reflecting onto the cleared pathways lit by braziers the guards attended to hourly. Her family’s home in the district assault the periphery of her visions, warmth emanating from the snowberry wreath and the various tokens of gratitude left at the stoop, but that warmth not existing for her. “Isra,” A hardened voice calls her from her thoughts, “I would like to extend my condolences for your loss.”

Isra glances up to see Yrsarald, his arms occupied with the bloodstained banner and her brother’s helmet he was about to present to the family. Your loss, it was odd to hear that, considering that in Skyrim it was customary to say your family’s loss. “You brother was a brave man, I was honored to fight by his side. He had such a presence on the battlefield and a fire in his heart for the liberation of Skyrim.”

Isra cocks her head, knowing that she should just thank the general, but ultimately settling on replying as she wished upon seeing an imposing figure emerging behind Yrsarald. It wasn’t as if she had honor to uphold anymore. “If his presence was truly a testament, why is he dead?”

“Excuse me, miss,” Yrsarald replies, a bit taken aback by Isra’s pointed tongue.

Ulfric, having emerged from his thoughtful stroll, smirks at the young man stammering trying to find his response, which Ulfric feared would be needlessly aggressive. “Yrsarald,” Ulfric approaches, “Why don’t you go ahead, tell them I will join you in a moment.”

Yrsarald nods, his tongue caught between his teeth as he glowers at the woman. “I’m sorry for your family’s loss,” Ulfric states, guiding her to walk away from the line of sight of the house with her brother’s urn tucked under his arm.

“It was a loss,” Isra’s cold eyes meet his, “We both knew he was not meant for battle.”

Ulfric piques an eyebrow, his hand grasping Isra’s shoulder in a soft show of support. “Perhaps when you knew him, Isra. But he changed.”

Isra gulps, her hands clasping together in a somber realization. She was still angry, but not at Ulfric, “You say that as if I had a choice if I could leave.” She removes the cloak, surprised by the vicarious assault of night air, and folded it over Ulfric’s arm.

“Keep the cloak,” Ulfric shoves it back to her, his eyes and patience narrowing.

“No,” she shakes her head.

“I have many cloaks, are you not cold?” Ulfric grits his teeth, but otherwise remains poised and uncaring.

“I’m just as Nord as you are,” Isra venomously retorts.

“I doubt it,” he chuckles, draping the cloak over her stiff arms.

“I guess I might as well hurry to the Grey Quarter then.”

The man’s lips thinned to a small line. His face blended in with the petrified wood and the old, crumbling stones. He became his city. Her father told her of Ulfric’s coronation, how the city was cloaked in blue, how even the elves came out to stare in a wide eyed glory of the son that returned from war. How he told the crown upon his head and remained humble, bowed in reverent to his late father, how the women littered the path with snowberries, mountain flowers, dragon’s tongue, and lavender, how the men held their shields in the old way—for when you held your shield to someone in the old ways, it meant you’d protect the person, a time before fear and survivalism took a shield to pertain to a personal sense of protection rather than wholesome, unselfish defense. “Do you plan to stay in Windhelm?”

With the night draping the city and her coin purse light, Isra had forgotten what she was to do for shelter. But that didn’t concern the Jarl. “No,” Isra crosses her arms.  
Ulfric then digs into his pocket and emerges with a satchel of what Isra assumed were septims. Isra, physically disgusted turns her head to the Jarl. “It was Haraldr’s gift to you,” Ulfric justifies, reaching out for her arm. “It isn’t much, but it’s what he set aside for you. He instructed it be sent to the Illiac Bay.”

Ulfric’s thick fingers wrap around her wrist, forcing her to face him. Isra timidly takes the satchel. “Wuunferth says there’s a storm coming in, the gates have already closed,” Ulfric clenches his jaw momentarily, but regains control over his temper, his shoulders visibly relaxing as he does so.

“I’ll find my way.”

Ulfric left her, and she followed him after he entered the home. Isra slacked against the side of the cabin, out of sight. She could hear through the planks of wood, their cheering, toasting in her brother’s name, camaraderie and hospitality. A certain warmness she felt from the cool stone that sept from the very foundation of the home haunted her. Surely, it was self-torture to willingly witness this celebration of life that excluded her, but she did it anyways. Like the radicals that burned themselves at the Temple of the One in Cyrodiil in the name of the Dragon God of Time, she sat there and set herself ablaze with jealousy and rage that was futile—she could never be welcomed in that home, by that family.

There was no way she could match her two dead brother’s military genius, their heroism, if not heroism their blind pride and devotion. Isra could not usurp her elder sister’s birthright, she was marked by the divines, after all. Before the tears could prick her eyes, she removed herself from the spot, wandering to the Stone Quarter in the genesis of the storm Wuunferth warned about. The waning marketplace vendors packed displayed inventory into crates, they stayed open late tonight to aid those preparing for the storm. Guards chatted about mundane things, and the murmur of dragons slipped through conversation any chance it did, if not mockingly so while they chipped away icy bits of the stone with their boots. It seemed as if every other hold guard thought they were the Dragonborn instead of the formidable Hjorta.

The wind blows through the stone city and creates echoes, a haunting chime infiltrating through the very hollows of the walkways. Navy gray skies do not lend to an inviting aura. She spotted a man in the distance, wearing no shoes and dirty, canvas clothing, shivering in the chill. She beckons towards his post near the front of Candlehearth Hall, the small, albeit, uninviting stone inn at the mouth of the city. “Aye, Kinsmen, care to share a cloak?” She calls to him.

“Na, you keep warm, miss,” He tries to give a half-hearted smile as he spots her ash marking, his frosty face refusing. The vagrant bites back a snicker, the girl’s mannerisms are odd, the way she spoke to him nearly sounded like a mocking impression of Nords. “Your brother was an honorable man, a good man, I wish I had been by his side.”

“Thank you, now come,” She stands next to the man, short by Nord standards, but still taller than her by a good head, “No good to remember him shivering cold.”

Tossing the heavy cloak around his shoulders, he winces, holding his chest at a diagonal as he uses the opposite arm to pull the cloak in closer. “Thank you, milady.”

“I’m no lady, I’m a shunned woman of common blood.”

“I heard about that. Damn elves, damn war…”

“Not all elves are bad, not all humans are good.”

“And it’s really comfortable to sit back and be gray about everything and refuse to pick a side.”

She grits her teeth, if she wasn’t so damned tired she would’ve cussed him and sulked into the inn. Glancing at his chest, she observes the jagged, infected, wound entering his chest through the slit in the canvas. “Have you been seen by a healer?” She worries, knowing if she pulled the all-too-familiar spell to her hand that he may strike her. Nords were funny that way, willing to die of rot and easily preventable ailments rather than see a healer or learn magic themselves.

“I don’t trust magic, same thing that kills so many can’t heal another.”

He had a valid point. “Aren’t you scared?”

“Na, hurts more than anything, the rot is settling, you can feel it spreading like poison.”

“I can help you, you know, I can let you live a longer life, one without so much pain.”

“And all for what?” He laughs, “To beg on the streets for the next ten years? To reminisce on old glories only to realize that it all doesn’t matter? Let me die girl, you’re green, you haven’t a clue what life will hand you yet.”

She sheds a tear, wanting to scream at him what life had handed her but she knew it wouldn’t make her feel better. The death of Haraldr had ripped open poorly healed wounds, and like a wounded sabre cat, it was important to project tenacity even on the brink of death. “Leave me cold,” He mocks as he throws the cloak off of his shoulders and walks away.

Isra takes the initiative and goes off on her own path, not ready to venture inside the inn. Ascending the steps to the Palace of the Kings, she takes time to read the tombstones, the markers of the great Ysgramoran kings of Windhelm. Their deeds. Their lives and accomplishments. Her fingers trace the stone etchings before she slumps against the wall.

_Mother Mara, do give me purpose, reveal to me the passion of my days._

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giving background to the story/Isra

She wakes up in a familiar room that smelled of chicken stew, but mostly celery as she assumed the pot had just been placed on the fire. Isra rises, her back against the headboard, examining the faint stains of red that indicated blood on the floor. Toes wriggle atop coarse linens foreign to her skin, but not forgotten. Her fingers comb soft rabbit fur as she drapes the pelts across her.

On the side table, a lavender dumpling sits atop a lead plate. Isra makes note to mention how dangerous lead is to whoever her host is. It was banned in the Bay several decades ago, but she supposed the surplus made its way to the other provinces. She bites into the crust and instantaneously moans, the flakes raining on her chin.

Moments later, she had finished the entirety of the dumpling, her stomach ravenous and yearning for more food so much so she hadn’t noticed the creaking of the door. A woman, nearly six foot with two feet of blonde hair emerges. Green eyes penetrate the rabbit furs before she progresses to stir the pot of soup in the fireplace. “Jarl Ulfric found you yesterday morning, basically buried in the snow,” she states matter-of-factly, stirring the pot. “He offered to house you.”

Isra coughs loudly, not realizing how raw her throat was. “And why didn’t you let him?”

Hjorta turns around, her eyes daggers. Along with her presence, her power must’ve been just as frightening. “I am your sister and he is a busy man.” She grasps the handle of a copper pitcher, filling two mugs of water before coming to sit at the edge of the bed. Isra stretches to clasp the water, muscles aching from the elements they had endured.

“Ahh,” she exhales after the water slicks her burning throat. “But this is our father’s home,” Isra nods, “Does he even know I’m here?”

Laughing softly, Hjorta fills Isra’s mug once again, “No, this is my home. Hjerim. It belonged to Frigga Shatter-Shield before she was murdered.”

Isra raises an eyebrow, choking slightly on her water, “Frigga Shatter-Shield was murdered?”

“Yes, by Calixto Corrium.”

Shaking her head, she wonders is the blood on the floor of Hjerim was that of her former childhood friend. “I always knew he was strange.”

“What happened to our home then?” She questions after a long pause.

Hjorta places a hand on her sister’s knee, “It burned down. Until I owned Hjerim, father lived with Mehra and Haraldr. He’s really hurt by you implying that he kept her from the funeral. The storms were too strong for her to travel.”

Isra gulps, though she wasn’t necessarily sad because of the destruction of the house itself, she was saddened by the destruction of her mother’s life. That home was riddled with her mother, and now it was ash. “I’m quite hurt that I’ve been shunned,” Isra rebukes with her fiery tongue.

Hjorta, though domineering in her aura, faltered. She didn’t have anything to say to her younger sister, perched under the covers in front of her, so close and yet so distant. “I’ve arranged for you to take a cart at dawn with my Housecarl, Lydia.”

Isra laughs heartily. “Because that worked out so well last time, didn’t it? You knew all along, didn’t you?” Her face reddens in anger and folly.

“No, I didn’t, and father didn’t know any better at the time.”

“It doesn’t take away from the fact that you knew where I was and what happened to me,” Isra says blankly, surprised at how level headed she was, “You knew that I never made it to the college. You knew where I was. And yet, you told everyone this lie.”

“We didn’t tell a lie,” Hjorta seethes, the Dragon clawed at the confines of her body, mild annoyances and contests now engulfed her entirety. “Everyone knew you were married to Razzaq.”

“Did they know the circumstances?”

“We knew you were well taken care of,” Hjorta rises, pacing angrily, “You made no indication otherwise.”

“Tell me why Belyn did not know I was in the Illiac Bay, married to Razzaq, living a happy life. Tell me why Mehra does not know!” Isra yells, the scaliness of her throat still bothering her, but she doesn’t feel she is ready to rise.

“I can’t give you the answer you’re asking me for. It does not exist,” Hjorta leans against the wood footboard, whitened knuckles grasping the log. “You weren’t here. You cannot attest to what you have not witnessed. But you will take the carriage and this pack tomorrow,” Hjorta points to the corner. She then paces angrily in the pregnant silence before settling on dumping the chicken stew into a ceramic bowl. Moodily, she tosses the bowl onto the nightstand, the broth spilling down the sides. “I have accepted my life,” Hjorta leans against the doorframe, “I have accepted its faults, and one of its greatest was sending you away. But you have to come to peace with it eventually.”

“You don’t get to decide that until you’ve been tricked and sold off like cattle,” Isra blinks away a tear before her sister shuts the bedroom door behind her.

Isra wanted more than anything to get up and storm away from the house, to grab her own bag that sat at the foot of the bed and disregard her sister’s orders. However, she could only motivate herself to take the soup and warm the sides of the bowl with a low burning fire spell. Some of the carrots, which she despised, were still quite crunchy and the chicken had the pinkness of life concentrated in the centermost pieces. Radishes bubbled to the top with the faintest aroma of fennel and leeks and Isra was transported to a different life when her family was still alive.

Haraldr and Savard were out hunting and scavenging as the spring snows were melting into the short lived, but well appreciated summer. Hjorta was at the market, they never really knew what she did during the day, but she always came back with a trinket and a story. Isra found herself listening to her mother read aloud from a book, concentrated on each pronunciation of the prose. It was a series by Carlovac Townlay, each line iterated with such excitement. How Isra yearned to ask questions, but she couldn’t find the voice to interrupt the presence of her mother.

In the middle of her reading, Hjorta sprinted home, at the time, they lived just outside of Valunstrad in a small house, barely big enough to contain them all. Hjorta, a young girl in blonde braids that bounced when she walked, was too excited to control herself, giddy, giggling, and beaming, she exasperate in one breath that lacked punctuation. “Father is home!”

Her mother immediately ceased to answer the young and ever quisitive Isra. Confused by the notion, her mother asks, “Hjorta, did you see him? Not every Nord with Red hair…”

“No,” Hjorta stresses. “I saw him. He lifted me up on his arms. He’s home!”

A woman of the court that owned finery reserved for her duties as a steward’s assistant, took Isra’s hand and led the girl towards the center street to see the thickets of soldiers marching home in her house clothes. “Isra,” she crouches, her mother’s beautiful eyes wet with tears of happiness, “Go get ready. Go get Hjorta ready and wait for your brothers.”

Her mother ran down the street, on the sidelines of the lingering soldiers, “And finish the fennel soup,” she calls over her shoulder before continuing on to what Isra thought was the palace.

Isra looks at her reflection in the bowl of soup and smiles wistfully, remembering that night when her father had come home from a campaign and brought the eulogy for the Bear of Eastmarch with him. She sips the broth, wincing as it burns the tip of her tongue, but soothes the throat. She finds the lone pepper in her soup and she wonders where Hjorta found a pepper here.

Her former husband taught her how to enjoy peppers in the way the school in the Illiac Bay for young women couldn’t. How some were vinegary, and some were floral in their expression of heat, he would deseed and mix in peppers to various things she made for them. Razzaq explained that peppers had capsaicin to ward off predators, but that the human palate could accommodate capsaicin over time. He held up an orange, small pepper to her nose one of their first nights together and Isra smelled roses. When she sank her teeth into the flesh when prompted, her mouth was assaulted with spice, her eyes watered, and she ran from the dining room.

He caught her wrist, apologized, and presented her with a bowl of yogurt. Isra bathed her tongue in it, relieved by the coolness. “I’m sorry,” he holds one of her hands with both of his. Through the reflection of caramel eyes, Isra saw how ridiculous she looked, and immediately removed her tongue from the bowl. Suffering the last few minutes of unexpected heat, Razzaq frowns. “You did not choose this life for yourself, but I want to make sure you don’t resent me.”

“That won’t happen,” Isra frowns, wiping away her tears, some from the pepper and some from her own sense of hopelessness. “You might as well do whatever you want.”

Isra bites into the pepper. It was tasteless.

She finishes her soup, swallowing down all of the memories that assaulted her with it. Isra finds the strength to rise from the bed. Pouring herself another glass of water, she opens the door and wanders to the living room to find her sister making a wreath, teary eyed and with her bottom lip snapped between her teeth. Hjorta’s eyes dart to Isra and she immediately steels herself, “Do you need anything?”

Isra shakes her head, “I was just going to go to the market and buy some supplies. Perhaps buy a fur and something to protect myself with.”

Hjorta smirks, shaking her head slightly, “Please, help yourself to my trunks. I have too many things to sell.”

“I’ll take a look later. I just need some fresh air.”

Hjorta rises from her craft, which Isra assumed would be for their brother’s plaque. She reaches from a peg and pulls down a white knitted cowl which extended down the body and into a long sleeve on the left arm. “Here. I had this made a long time ago. It will go to waste otherwise.”

“Hjorta…”

“No,” Hjorta asserts, thrusting the garment into Isra’s arms. “Go put on a fresh pair of clothes and the cowl. I cannot afford for you to get sick again.”

` Isra refuses to comment, taking the garment and returning to her quarters. She digs out a tunic or two from the dresser, a dress from the trunk, and thermals from anywhere she could find before stuffing it in her two bags. Lacing up tall boots over thick socks, she examines herself and finds the tunic and trousers tucked into the boots to be more than sufficient. Nimble fingers braid her hair into a crown and she shrugs the cowl atop her thick tunic.

When she steps outside, she’s confronted by the overabundance of snowberries. Did the people of Windhelm fail to realize the beneficial properties of the berry in alchemy. She bundles together at least a pound of them and stuff them into her saddle bag. Her brother had enough.

She finds herself at the White Phial, upon entering, she overhears, “Alchemy is simple, unless, of course, you are simple. Then, I can’t help you.”

“Oh, hello,” the Altmeri alchemist excuses himself from the tutoring and berating of his apprentice, “How may I help you?”

“How much for a pound or two of snowberries,” her eyes search the establishment for a name, “Nurelion.”

He snorts, folding his arms across his chest, “You’re selling the deceased’s bounty, eh?”

“There’s a funeral every other day here. I know you’re in shortages with the snow arriving,” Isra pulls out the bundles of snowberries, some of varying quality and weathering.

Nurelion examines each stalk, some more carefully than others, and even plucks one off of the stem and chews on it before spitting it out. “Bitter as Oblivion, but otherwise, a good stock.” He muses over them for a while longer.

“Hurry up. Fifty septims or I’ll take them with me to Hammerfell.”

Nurelion heartily laughs, “Impatients becomes ugliness. I’ll give you twenty.” Isra shakes her head, gathering them up and placing them back into the bag. “How about thirty?”

“I’ll settle for forty… No, forty one since you called me ugly,” Isra states, her hand hovering over the buckle securing her bag.

“Deal. And I never said you were ugly. Only your brevity,” Nurelion corrects, snapping to signal his apprentice to gather the coins from his chest, the Imperial counts out exactly forty-one and place them on the counter. “In Alinor, we like to season the conversation with riddles and aphorisms, to foster a certain depth and mutual understanding…”

“Me Nord, Me stupid,” Isra interrupts with a faint smirk tugging at the edges of her lips, placing the pound and a half of snowberries onto the scales.

Nurelion chuckles as Isra sprinkles the coins into her bag, “Thank you for your patronage,” he mockingly exclaims. Isra only shuts the door behind her.

Her eyes focus on the precipice of the city, the Palace of the Kings, while her fingers run through the musky, but appealing smelling fur that was given to her the day prior. Mustering the courage to approach the palace, she opens the door to find that the stone walls had not changed since she was a girl. The same canvas banners hung from the walls and the same iron braziers littered the periphery of the insulated stone. It was an oven in here, what with the ancient mechanisms that heated the stones in addition to the open flames. Jorleif, ever attentive, brightens when he regards her. “Isra!” He beams.

“Jorleif, it is a pleasure to see you,” she advances, wrapping the family friend in a tight hug.

“You become your mother with each passing day. I look at you and see so much of Marlena,” He compliments, “Please, what can I do for you? I’m devastated by your family’s loss.”

And Jorleif probably was devastated. Their families lived close together and her mother was key in the transition from the previous steward to Jorleif, basically teaching Jorleif all about her position before Marlena passed away. It wasn’t uncommon for Jorleif to join them for dinner, or for Jorleif to invite them over to his home and split a bottle of wine far too expensive for him to drink alone. “The Jarl gave me a fur and I would like to return it. I really appreciate the gesture,” Isra presents the fur, slightly damp around the edges of the fibers, but otherwise intact.

Jorleif nods vibrantly, excited by the woman’s presence, “If you want to wait…”

“No,” Isra smiles, “We both know he won’t take it back if I present it. Chivalry, while appreciated, is not…”

Ulfric strides from the opening on the left, eyes darting directly to the two catching up in the corner. A weathered smile tugs at the edges of a hardened face. A hard life had rendered him like his city walls, hard, imposing, but still possessing a certain warmth despite all odds. “Jorleif,” He addresses, “Stop what you’re doing right now.”

Isra rolls her eyes, which catches Ulfric’s attention. “Your mother and husband required you to be courtly, in what court in Illiac did they allow you to conduct yourself like that?”

“Windhelm is no Illiac court, praise Talos,” Isra responds, which elicits a generous chuckle from the Jarl.

“Come, sit, we were about to have dinner.”

“No, Jarl Ulfric, I could not impose. Not after you found me frozen on your step last night”

“You can’t impose, I invited you.”

“I’ve just had soup.”

“Have some more.”

Isra sighs, offering Ulfric his fur, “I must get going. I have a cart at daybreak to take me to… I’m not sure exactly. All I know is that I’ll be traveling with a woman named Lydia.”

Ulfric’s eyes sparkle as he rejects the cloak, trailing to Jorleif before back to Isra. “Say, would you mind doing me a favor?”

“Yes,” Isra replies, “Considering I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know if I can deliver on my word.”

“Lydia is the Housecarl to Whiterun,” Ulfric asserts, “And I’d like for you to deliver something to Jarl Balgruuf.”

“Continue,” she prompts.

“My axe.”

Jorleif pales, but knows better than to inject himself between the Jarl and his requests. Though Ulfric was malleable to counsel, when it came to the war, Jorleif was forbidden from commenting on the war. While the stipulation wasn’t explicit, whenever he lent his perspective, it was always met with disdain from Ulfric. But, surely, Isra knew the meaning of delivering an axe.

Her face flushes and her head shakes fervently, “I shouldn’t involve myself in a rivalry that started before my birth.”

Nodding, he offers “Do stay for some wine and mead. I have some of the best wines that no one will ever drink. Consider my fur a welcome home gift. I will not accept my fur from you.”

She places the fur on the table, “Thank you, Jarl Ulfric. I appreciate your hospitality and hope to visit Windhelm come this summer.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a slow story. Sorry I haven't updated in a while, the end of the semester is approaching!

“Do you get to the Cloud district often? What am I saying, of course you don’t,” a man with the pomp of her husband exasperates as he passes her. Considering that Lydia lived in the keep for several years prior, she wasn’t aware of Nazeem making it to the Cloud District often. “Ignore him,” Lydia advises, climbing the stairs to the keep, “Come, I’ll show you what’s in Whiterun.”

Isra wasn’t a stranger to the city, having stayed in the inns once as a young girl. It was less dense than Windhelm, but more breathable. Slightly winded, but not so much as Lydia was from climbing the steps in full armor, Isra gapes at the view of the unimposing wooden city. The watercolor edges of the plains stretched beyond what she could ever explore with the only interuption the dilapidated tower on the edges of road. Each bushel of lavender seemed to lend a fragrance to the air, the purple plants dotting the city itself and ravaging the plains below. “The Plains district has all the shops and inns. Breezehome is there, at the mouth of the city. You’re welcome to stay.”

The fabled mead hall, Jorrvaskr, was to her left and she peered down to see an old man with a mane of white hair working at a whetstone. The ancient boat must’ve been there for ages before her, watching the wood shingled homes crop up within the walls. “The Wind district is mostly residences. And the Cloud district houses the keep and the prison.”

“We just passed the Gildergreen, which is the focal point of the city…”

“Why does it look so dead?” Isra raises a brow, actually paying attention to the monotone of the Housecarl’s voice. 

Cocking her head, Lydia supposed she had seen the tree so often she didn’t recognize the gradual death of it. “I’m sure the Priestess knows why. I’m afraid that Heimskr probably yells too loudly for me to think when I pass it,”  Lydia shrugs in her armor, seemingly unbothered by the ancient tree and its state, “All life must die at some point.”

“It’s been here long before us and will be here long after us.”

Lydia chuckles, wondering how Isra and Hjorta were raised together. “Your sister always wanted to chop it down and make arrows.”

“That figures. Say, how far is Riverwood from here?” Though the world unfurled before her, the high sun of afternoon would only linger for a few hours more in the winter. 

Hjorta had mentioned Riverwood, the quaint green village on the edge of the hold she passed through after Helgen. While Hjorta never saw Riverwood as more than a town to pass through, Isra saw a modest life to be made there. The inn would likely be cheaper and mills always needed labor. “About half a day’s journey, but the paths are littered with wolves at night.”

“Wolves on the common roads?” 

“People don’t travel anymore. It’s not safe,” Lydia warns, though Lydia admitted the reason, Isra could feel the unsaid word  _ war  _ dangling in the cold air. Isra continues to survey the city, judging that Riverwood was likely past the farms dotting the periphery of the plains on the edge of the mountains. “I will take my leave,” Lydia announces. 

For lack of a better plan and in dire need of supplies, Isra mindlessly follows Lydia. The beauty of the city relied on it’s coziness. Though on the brink of shivering, the wooden buildings with the scalloped, and sometimes thatched, roofs yielded to the sensibilities more so than the stone blocks she called home in this cold land. Approaching what Isra thought was Breezehome, Lydia releases a frustrated grunt. “They aren’t supposed to be here,” the warrior grumbles, gesturing to the two men in Alik’r dressings. 

Isra freezes, examining her surroundings while Lydia steps ahead to confront them. “We’re looking for a Redguard woman, possibly going by a different name…” 

Her heart rakes against the inside of her chest, their words fading into a murmur while Lydia confront the pair. “You! The Jarl has already said you are unwelcome here. Out!” Though this command was lost to Isra, who had slumped against the side of a building, tearing away at her fingernails before they tremble around the hilt of an iron dagger. She can see him clearly, as if he were in front of her right now. Razzaq when he submitted to his fits of rage was the worst beast she had ever encounter, he’d destroy whatever he could find first. He’d hack away at his footboard with his scimitar, sending chunks of fragrant cedar flying onto the comforter. 

Razzaq always told her she could leave if she needed to, that she wasn’t his prisoner, but his aggression undermined the nature of these promises. Isra winces at his various threats- from selling her to corsairs over her wiry tongue and even surrendering her to the Aldmeris over a minor embarrassment at a party. Should she ever leave, she was certain that she’d be dragged back by a fistful of her hair, and left to bear Razzaq. “Are you staying?” Lydia curtly asks. Given Isra’s state of mind, Lydia had probably asked more than once. 

“For the night, if you don’t mind.”

~~

Riverwood had served her good while the winter snows had melted. She kept to herself while she worked the saw mill during the day, hauling logs onto the splitter, loading cartfuls of wood, and chopping firewood for the various townspeople. The first few days she had arrived, the townspeople filtered through the inn, wondering what to make of this long term traveler. Nights were filled with talking, gossip, and wine, ended by dancing by the open fire. As her newness wore off, she began to spend nights on the perimeter of the inn, if in the common area at all. Recently, she’d been taking her dinner in her room with several glasses of wine and a book. 

Today, she found herself skinning the hide off of a wolf she had killed with Faendal this morning. She’d hang them out wherever the townspeople would let her and had earned a good bit of money by selling leather and pelts to the Khajiits that passed through every three days from Markarth. “I wish Sven would fall down a cliff,” Faendal grumbles, working on the rabbit he had speared through the eye. 

“I wish you’d stop talking about Sven,” Isra grunts, ripping at the hide to dislodge it from the spine. Her nose twitches from the rank of death, a stench that was exceptionally pungent with wolves. Ripping her gloves off by the fingers, she digs into a small salve tin, rubbing it on and inside of her nose. 

“Pass me some.” Isra tosses it to Faendal, whose nimble fingers wrap around the rim as a smile curls on his lips. “I suppose you don’t want to hear about Camila?”

Isra rolls her eyes, finely separating the the skin from the delicate leg bones. She didn’t know why the elf was so infatuated with Camila when it was obvious that she fancied neither. However, in order to benefit from Faendal’s archery skill, his knowledge, and just making life easier when she went to work, she learned to bear with the snippets of the impossible love. “I want to hear my coins rattling against each other.”

“And the way you hack at those logs and you bleed Gerdur dry, I’m sure you go to bed pleased,” Faendal wraps the steaks in fresh canvas, stuffing them into his pack. “Have you spotted any hawks? I need to make more arrows.”

“I’ve been using pine needles.”

“And that’s why you’re missing,”

She grits her teeth, ripping the final bit of the hide from the muscles. Wiping away the dirt on her pant leg, she peers down the mountains onto the plains, freed by the feeling of a dagger in her hand and spring chills at her back. Flame bushes poked out of snow mounds and something in her guts pulls her back to the stone walls. “I think I’m done here,” she speaks quietly. 

Faendal rises, kicking at the carcass so it doesn’t block the crumbling cobblestone road. The sun was rising, a red spot bleeding on the horizon, “I doubt I’ll stick it out much longer. I think I’m ready to live in the woods myself.”

Squinting at the horizon, she takes bloodied gloves and shoves them in her dingy trouser pockets, taking her hand to shield her eyes. “Tell Gerdur I’m taking the day.”

Hauling buckets of water to her room, she is no longer winded by the exercise. IT took eight buckets to fill the tub, and each trip she was more sure of her decision to leave with winter. Upon each bucketful she pours into the tub, she warms the brass sides, calling fire to her hands and watching the water doused with lavender and vanilla steam with fragrance and heat. Tossing the rose petals with a flick of her wrist, she’s brought back momentarily to a past life, but it fades away before it rises to the surface.

Sinking into the tub, she supposes that she is healing. Eyes glazed over, she rubs away her warpaint to reveal the same face that arrived in Riverwood, but more composed. Hard work had given way to ripples in her shoulder, slight shadows detailing the muscles she had gained chopping wood. Raising her legs and propping her toe on her dresser, a line of definition carved into her calves. 

A knock sounds on her door as she’s combing through her curls, dark threads unraveling and diminishing in the lighter hair at the roots. “Come in,” she swivels her head slightly before she refocuses on her feet at the edge of the tub. Delphine opens the door, and quickly motions to close it before Isra clears her throat, “It’s fine.”

Delphine, obviously uncomfortable, remains attached to the perimeter of the room, “People are saying that you’re leaving today.”

“Probably. I’ll pay you,” Isra lowers herself into the tub. Delphine exits without saying anything, silently looking back before shutting the door completely. 

She considers delivering Faendal’s letter before leaving, but ultimately decides that she won’t stoop that low. Embracing him, she realizes how much she had grown towards him, if only due to the fact that she saw him everyday. The sun shines behind them, an orange indigo sky expanding forever before the yellow plains. He places a bundle of arrows in her quiver, offering only a half smile before he walks back towards the Trader, presumably to annoy Camila. 

The evening breeze settles in, bristling against her bare hands that tremble around a bow. How beautiful and frightening it was to be entirely alone with but a few arrows and a path between her and a warm hearth. It was best to start now, so Isra sticks to the creekside. 

Water runs along the damp earth christening the bottom of otterskin moccasins. Faendal had lined her boots with the waterwicking fur. Although it was cruel to kill such a playful creature, Isra’s feet after several days of hard work had separated the skin from her feet, a white sub skin. The little pebble the creature tossed about rested in her pocket. She thinks about her condition and what would come of her future. Perhaps she would take up a home in the Whiterun hold, but she supposed that she would determine that tomorrow morning after a restful evening at the Bannered Mare. Fledgling muscles may have emerged over the course of the hard work at the mill, but she didn’t feel comfortable in the uncertainty of night, at least, not without a horse. 

Something pulled deep in her gut, something that whispered that it wasn’t Whiterun where she would settle herself down. Isra wasn’t sure there was a place suitable for her to stay for long. Her soul pulled her to different places, necessitating the changing of her situation as if her situational existence was as sure as the seasons turn the leaves red. Wherever she found herself, she felt foreign. Like the very soil below her feet rejected her standing atop of it. She felt more grounded in Windhelm, if only for the fact she stood on artificial stones. 

Honeyed air floated along the plains, bristled away by reeds singing their own songs as the orange sky transferred to a pale violet. The brewery doused the air in this subtle sweetness that just caused the corners of your lips to tug upwards. That is, until the stench of an otherworldly creature stomps at cabbages. Her heart thumps loudly, perspiration instead of fire brought to her palms, but, they curl around a bow and she shakily aims. 

As the arrow pierces the giants shoulder, she realizes the steel clad warrior at the base of the giant. Almost mechanically, if only guided by the presence of adrenaline, another arrow notches into the neck of the giant, spewing a vile liquid from the vein as she beholds the form of this warrior. He was the largest man she’d ever seen and he moved fluidly under the immense weight of the steel armor. It amazed Isra how each hack at the giant’s knees was instigated. 

Isra aims at the neck again, missing, and cursing as the arrow lodges itself in the fence post. The next draw of her bow slaps the bowstring against her arm and a red blush settles on the apples of her cheeks. What was she to these refined warriors, the archer of the group emerging from the left flank, arrows notched before they ever left the string. Slinging her bow across her shoulder, Isra focuses and calls lightning to her hands, channeling all of her energy and power to strike the giant. 

“Fall back!” 

The sparks sputter from her hands as her will falters. The calmness of the plains and the honeyed air stills, punctuated by the thud of the giant. Isra disarms herself, staring at those across the field. She meets eyes, all three of the warriors that sized up their victory having painted faces. That, or grime. Slinging the bow across her shoulder, she pulls the hood further to conceal her face and continues on the path. 

“You handled yourself well enough, you’d make for a good Shield Sister,” the woman calls out to her, running towards Isra despite already labored breathing. Isra thought that the archer looked wild, her armor presumably made for warmer climates, the teeth along her neck conveying that this woman lived at the heart of the woods rather than in the city. She slung herself carelessly across the railing, catching her breath as the man in steel hands her a swollen waterskin. 

Isra shrugged, “You look like you handled it well on your own.”

The man chuckles loudly, his voice barely impacted by the strenuous fight he just endured. “Yeah, but we didn’t shock it to death.” 

“"Certainly not. But a true warrior would have relished the opportunity to take on a giant. That's why I'm here with my Shield-Brothers."

Removing her own waterskin, she takes a gulp or two before removing a razor. “Are you going to take the toes?” She asks nonchalantly, twirling the razor as she doesn’t seem to care for the answer. Giants Toe would be a nice sell in any marketplace


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a sloooowww burn. I apologize if I'm redundant or if my writing is whack, but in this chapter, we finally join the Companions!
> 
> Also, I really need to read over before I post. Yikes. So many repeats & mispellings

She learned that the wild woman was named Aela as she dislocated meaty, sludge filled joints to extract the toes. The farmer had asked if the Companions would remove the decaying carcass and the valiant order responded with a shrug. Isra couldn’t blame them, she didn’t find herself particularly drawn to hacking at the disgusting creature and burning it either.

Aela told her to see Kodlak Whitemane if she wanted to join the guild, however, Isra was in a mood where she didn’t care for being told what to do. She spent her time between hunting, the Bannered Mare, and the town square. By the third day of drinking all night and sitting outside all day, Isra was intently bored with scalloped roofs, mead, and lavender. Riften, the wooden city, seemed to draw her in with the promises of warmer weather and less expensive living. Faendal mentioned Riften in passing and it seemed that the city that had not risen above it’s grimy character.

Isra found herself at the dying Gildergreen, eyes flitting from the mead hall to the keep and beyond. Just beyond the mead hall, there stood a wall that separated the plateau of the city from the greater plains below. There was this overflow of emotion on looking at the world before her. Riverwood had done wonders for herself in realizing that there was a life to be made anywhere. That Skyrim itself wasn’t a snowed in vacuum of joy. So, in the spirit of neverending possibility, she rises and approaches the door. When she pried the wooden monstrosity open, the honeyed scent of mead, the brusqueness of firewood, and rising voices greeted her in lieu of any one individual.

A Dunmer and an Imperial chaotically meshed with each other, intersecting limbs with curses streaming from their lips as their brawl attracted more attention than her entrance. "Azura curse you!" The Dunmeri man yells, landing a punch with a satisfying thud and a chorus of approval. Orientated in a grand semicricle the table loaded with food and empty bottles were shrouded in the amber glow of fire at the center, which would crackle if it weren’t for the rowdiness. At the head of the mead hall was a red velvet display of axe fragments, at least, the velvet would have been red if it weren’t speckled with burn marks from loose embers and dust. The tips of the fire dance as endemic wind sweeps in with the door. No one pays her much mind, the only sign of welcome a half hearted wink from the giant man she had seen earlier in the week before he is pulled back into the lull of the drum he beats against.

She assumed the leader was downstairs, too old or too wise to partake in the foolishness and revelries of the young, or possibly, those chasing youth with a heap of mead. Isra spotted a man that probably served with her father in the legion nearly asleep in his quilted overcoat. Making sure to pull the door behind her silently, she leans against the wooden door, scanning the hall that was every bit as cold as Windhelm. Rich red banners seemed to provide a small sense of homely warmth rather than the feeling of a barrack to house mercenaries until further utility. “The Blood,” she hears a man’s voice in the distance, and her eyebrows pique if only for a moment before she is lost to her own observation.

Soft skin hardening to callouses on her fingers walk along the spines different texts on the bookshelf. She had not expected there to be so many bookshelves, though most of them were littered with either broken blades or food. She also had not expected the solitary bucket beneath one of the beds, nor the stench from that half of the living quarters. Light footsteps meander down the hallway, ignoring the conversation of old men at the head of it.

Isra removes a well used tome free of dust. _The Songs of the Return vol 56,_ a book that she supposed her mother had read to her, but she forgot. These were old memories for an old life doused in goldenrods and cotton dresses, something she could envision in snippets in her mind, but never completely. ”We all do. It is our burden to bear. But we can overcome..”

Neck craning into an arch over the book, fingers hastily turn through the text. Her eyes darts from page to page, and her silence yields to the ruffling of old parchment stained with grease fingerprints. “What was that?” Steel boots on the stone echo through the empty hall, the footfalls unsure when her presence is discovered.

She places the book onto the shelf and turns to the man approaching, similar to the giant upstairs but leaner. There was an unspoken intensity to him, if only from his wide blue eyes foregrounded on a layer of thick warpaint. Black hair curls at the ends poking a granite speckled neck from the combination of dried sweat and dirt. “Are you lost?”

Isra shakes her head, eyes caught in the intricacy of the armor he wore. Instinctively, her hand grabs at the strap of her bag slung around her shoulder before she looks him in his eyes confidently, “I need to speak with Kodlak Whitemane.”

The man snorts, returning the shaking of his head, “I doubt it. You can speak with me.”

Her hand clenches around the strap and her teeth bite at her cheek. If only out of spite for this pompous man, she would join the Companions. She vowed to herself the moment she crossed the border to Skyrim that no one would talk down to her again, much less a man. “And who are you exactly?” Once again, the man snickers and Isra lost whatever tolerance she had. She walks beyond Vilkas, a strip of red emerging along her nose and cheekbones in a defiant anger as her hands fall to her sides, composing herself for whoever Kodlak Whitemane was.

Upon entering the room, she clears her throat and allows years of practice envelop her sensibilities, holding her body taught and at attention as she would in the presence of company. She takes in the men before her, the one she confronted in the hallway propped himself against the doorframe and the elderly man leaned back in the chair who brought a weathered body to the edge of the woven seat. “I take it you’ve already met Vilkas,” The old man sighs, gesturing for the moody warrior to sit in the empty chair opposite of himself. 

Beneath the table laid a woven rug from Hammerfell, and to the opposite wall a banner of a maintained velvet. Isra doesn’t allow herself to get lost in the twists and curls of the undyed, jute rug, but she remembers the past life where she could, “I’d like to join,” Isra plainly states, a hand resting on her hip as she finishes, looking to both men to assert her intentions.

“Oh?” The gray beard twitches, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile. There was much to learn about people from how their faces weathered, the the crinkles around Kodlak’s mouth and eyes soothed Isra and indicated a fulfilled life, something that Isra so desperately sought. “Let me have a look at you.”

Isra’s impatience, heightened by her interaction with Vilkas, unravels salty words from tightened lips, “What else have you been doing?”

“Hold your tongue,” Vilkas warns.

Kodlak chuckles, a twinkle warming old eyes, “A certain strength of spirit for sure!”

“That isn’t enough to warrant joining. You can’t be seriously considering her, master,” Vilkas’s brow furrowed. His skin depressed slightly around the forehead into three indistinct lines, age and frustration would rectify their faintness, rendering him harsh and bookish.

Isra couldn’t help but flare her nostrils in Vilkas’s presence. “I am no one’s master, Vilkas. And last I checked, we had some empty beds in Jorrvaskr for those with a fire burning in hearts. And tongue.”

Isra smirks, shuffling on her feet to a more comfortable, less formal position. It didn't feel natural to the body to stand upright, however, it was powerful to distort one's own humanity, to defy the ligaments of the spine and the aches of vertebrae that so desperately want to hunch over to a vulnerability. Eyes catch a daedra heart atop a map and Isra's wonders why an old warrior has a daedra heart, save for a token of a hard battle. “Apologies,” Vilkas regards Isra before he returns his attention to Kodlak, “But perhaps this isn't the time. I've never even heard of this outsider...”

“Isra al-Abbas.”

Kodlak cocks his head to the side, “I’ve spent time in Hammerfell. Do you hail from there? Or is your father a Redguard?”

Isra shakes her head, her hands clasped together as her sharp tongue and confidence fail her. Perhaps it was best to lie, and she curses herself for the involuntary action to deny it. “I hail from Windhelm. I was married to a merchant in Hammerfell. I am no longer.”

“I apologize for my brashness,” Kodlak strokes through the end of his beard, squinting at what he saw as a lost woman. Isra al-Abbas was not a runaway noble, that much he could tell, her hands showed the signs of hard work around the joints where skin peeled away to toughened flesh. “Sometimes the famous come to us. Sometimes men and women come to us to seek their fame. It makes no difference. What matters is their heart.”

“And their arm,” Vilkas quips at the end, seemingly annoyed, but also interested in the woman before him. Unlike Kodlak, he wasn’t as convinced.

“How are you in a scrap, Isra?”

“We’ll find out. I have a lot to learn.”

Vilkas rolls his eyes, he didn’t understand Kodlak’s affinity towards the woman. How could he allow this runaway wife to join the order? He was unsure of the girl’s ability, if she had any besides allure and a quick wit. “You have a certain fire in you, you’re welcome to sleep with the other whelps in Jorrvaskr, and Vilkas will see to you in the morning. For now, we all need rest.”

“I have business in town, but I’ll return in the morning." Considering that a row of beds with a bucket underneath wouldn’t make for a pleasant night. At least, at the inn, the rooms were above the chatter and dancing so that the very walls didn’t vibrate with commotion from above.

 

~~

 

Isra felt uneasy as she approached the Gildergreen, the last of the red leaves fluttering against dead branches. Other than sporadic breeze, Whiterun was still for now, the uninhibited preaching of the mad priest droned above the bustle of market mornings, children and families perusing the stalls and the streets to bathe in the sun that the long winter had deprived them of. Thoughts of dragons and the rebellion receded, if only for a morning, to collectively bask in the excitement of first planting and the wind tickled lavender.

A dull sword lodged between a belt and woolen trousers swings at Isra’s side. She only knew this because Olfina Gray-Mane examined it before she left the inn,  consulting Jon only to have him grimace at the chips in the blade. “I doubt you could cut butter with this,” Jon chuckled as he plucked an arrow from the quiver on Isra’s back, “You’d best stick to these.”

So, after a while grinding away at the whetstone, she found herself ready as she would ever be to show her limited skills. Retreating into the yard, she sits at a table on the periphery with a Dunmer man attending to his spear as she rips off a chunk of bread. Arrows collect towards a bullseye as Aela stands at a distance, barely aiming and boasting such accuracy.

“Are you still considering your choice?” A husky voice sounds from a corner, doubting and patronizing in its delivery.

Isra shakes her head, retrieving her water skin from her bag and downing a sizable gulp before standing, “No. I’m not.” She figured that speaking to him as little as possible would be her prerogative.

He had bathed since she saw him last night, his face unobstructed and fresh against the spring sun. Vilkas was quite attractive, save for his demeanor that contorted his face every time Isra gazed on him, or anytime he was confronted by a person that wasn’t the Harbinger. “Let’s get this over with then.”

The large man from the giants playing perches against a column, a hearty smirk livening his already genuine features. Various men and women in mismatched leathers line the bench, all unamused or more interested in their food. Aela moves to the perimeter of the yard to take in the whelp. Two men, the older one in the red quilted coat, and a warrior, not as old as the man next to him, still spry and cunning, line the edge of the porch, watching intently for lack of anything else to do.

Isra drops her bag at the edge of the yard, far away from those she thought would rifle through them. Her eyes squint against a young sun as she pulls bunches of coiled, curly hair into a ponytail atop her head. Intent eyes watch Vilkas as he stretches and the joints of his armor slightly rise with the movement. When he steps into the light, fastening the eloquently carved shield to his arm, Isra thought the armor would glisten, but it doesn’t. The dull metal absorbs the light, still calling to attention the carvings in both the armor and the shield, all culminating to a wolf’s head.

Isra plants her feet in the ground as Vilkas readies his shield. The stillness of an otherwise windy city does nothing to assuage her nerves. ““Well don’t just stand there and gawk at me girl!”

Stifled laughter erupts from the table of whelps, who all turn their attention to the newcomer. Isra draws her sword, knowing from her father’s teachings that it was horribly unbalanced. “Go on and hit him!” An imperial woman taunts as she rises from the table, standing for this spectacle.

For whatever her father taught her about his craft of mending weapons and fighting, he taught her siblings three times as much. Most of her lessons came from her mother, or from arcane books she wasn’t allowed to read, but found it in herself to read anyways when Razzaq was busy. She kept a demanding spell lulling in the back of her mind and tried to tune out the Imperial woman mocking her and the positive reception this mocking garnered.

She advances with the sword, swinging downwards at the shield. A satisfying clank sounded against the metal and she brings the sword down yet again and hits the top edge of the shield. Her heart races with surprise, startled eyes meeting Vilkas’s own as the shield crashes against her chest and knocks her off of her feet and into the fine dirt. Encouraged by the bouts of laughter, Vilkas jeers, “Is that all you’ve got in you, girl?”

Though still shocked from the fall, she rises and charges, making sure that she keeps distance through a technique of hacking and jumping back. She dodges two more of his blows as they circle around one another. Succumbing to Vilkas once again, he knocks her down even harder than last time, causing the sword to clatter to the ground and Isra to gasp for air as it was forced from her lungs.

Arrows from her quiver scatter the yard as a result from her falls and she’s worried about the integrity of her bow slung around her back. “Come on, get up!” She isn’t quite sure who says it in her haze, but she crumbles to her knees. “You’re pathetic!”

At this point, the man giant peels away from his post, “Brother! This is not necessary!” His large, booming voice accompanies his figure. Vilkas begins to walk away from Isra.

Vilkas’s distraction with the man giant presented opportunity. “Farkas!” Vilkas responds as Isra dipped into the deep reserve nestling in her, rising to certain feet.

How the cunning craft begged to be used as the purple energy emanated from calmed hands. Careful not to indulge into her vengeful wishes, she inhales twice for every exhale, focusing herself as she approaches Vilkas. Steadily, Isra coaches herself, how she would hate to spook him and ruin her plan as the hilt materializes in her palm. The vibrating energy delights her. How she missed grasping the ethereal blade and feeling the swarms of power vibrating in her grasp!

Isra wrapped around his neck from behind in a swift movement, maneuvering the spectral blade in the crevice of his armor where the pauldron met the breast plate. The giant draws a longsword, but the bald headed man halts him, intrigued by the smell of magicka and the woman’s move. Surely, Vilkas could handle her. Vilkas thrashed violently beneath her, and Isra clutched the blade even tighter, nudging under the space between the joints to find the leather straps. It was all she could do not to be thrown off or unintentionally slice the Companion’s skin as spectral blades were hard to control due to their weightlessness.

Isra slices outwards and against the leather straps in a single cut before she bursts into maniacal laughter at the feeling of the steel plates beneath her go slack. Falling into a defensive stance, she positions the dagger between her chest and abdomen, both arms ready to futilly push back against the advancing, enraged man with his armor hanging away from his body.

“Vilkas,” the bald man lowly interrupts Vilkas’s furious advance towards Isra, to which Isra’s laughs dissipated to silence as her heart thumped wildly against the confines of her battered chest. The beast in Vilkas relished in that physiological reaction to fear, feeding off of it and teasing the urge to hunt her. This moment of animalism subsided in self loathing upon hearing Skjor’s cautioning voice.

“We don’t do battle with magic around here, new blood,” Vilkas growls after a few deep breaths. Whelps lined at the table were unsure of whether to laugh or remain quiet, and Farkas authoritatively tells them to mind their own lot. Isra is surprised when they do.

Vilkas had underestimated her, though she was creative, she lacked basic techniques fundamental to not getting herself killed. Removing his shield, and then his effected pieces of armor, he regards Isra, “You’ve proven your worth.”

The armor makes a pile in front of her, his right pauldron, his shield, and his breastplate all litter the ground. He still shakes with anger, but his convulsions are better controlled. He removes his sword from his scabbard, and extends it to her. “Go have my armor fixed and my sword sharpened,” he demands of her.

Isra looks down at the pile and then back to Vilkas. She is enamored by the sword itself, but disgusted by the errand. “No.”

“You do as I say, new blood,” Vilkas clenches his teeth, “Take my sword to Eorlund to have it sharpened. Be careful, it’s probably worth more than you are.”

“We serve no masters,” Isra punctuates each word, now only interested in arguing for the sake of it.

Skjor intervenes from his stoop on the edge of the porch, “Take it whelp, I’d be surprised if you can carry that all in one trip.”

Mirroring Vilkas and gritting her teeth, she takes the sword from his hands, off put by how heavy it actually is for how delicate its appearance was. She takes one of his pauldrons and struggles to lift the breastplate, deciding just to leave it there while she seethes.

Vilkas flowers, she was positively maddening in her defiance. He made it his mission to tame her sharp tongue. “Whelp,” he addresses her as she walks away, causing her to turn around and face him yet again. Fatigue was evident on her face, caked with sweat and dirt, Vilkas can’t help but snicker internally at her state. He was sure that the grooves of his shield would bruise on her chest, though her harm did not bring him any pleasure, but rather, it brought great satisfaction to the beast. “We fight with honor here. Not on clever…”

“You’re a mercenary,” Isra’s voice is effortlessly venomous, “You have no honor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You should definitely comment! I always want to hear from y'all! I need to get better with replying. 
> 
> I'll probably be busy until the end of next week with finals, but I'll try to squeeze in an update. It might be shorter than usual. Would you like shorter updates that happen more frequently, or longer updates that happen every week or so? I'll consider it but I'll still probably screw it all up.


	5. Chapter 5

Spring storms gathered at the edges of the mountains by the time she had spoken with Eorlund and dropped off Vilkas's armor. Whispers did not halt at the steps of the Skyforge, and the white haired man admitted to peering over the side of the rocks and snickering when he realized that the whelp had cut away Vilkas's armor. "If only you were half as strong as you are spiteful. You'd be able to beat away the Legions yourself," Eorlund lauded as he examined the leather straps of the armor, noting the slight singe of ethereal blade that committed the act. 

 

Eorlund knew the girl. Isra of Windhelm, daughter of Skjorheim, sister to the Dragonborn, however, he kept that to himself. Being sister to the Dragonborn meant that Isra certainly could afford a sharp sword in lieu of ethereal weapons, especially so that her father was a renowned smith. Aforementioned, whispers did not cease at the steps of the Skyforge and they certainly whisked around with the winds as rampantly as pollen rattled from new life and dusted spring in gold. Perhaps Isra found herself here to make her own fate, to protest against being solely the sister of the Dragonborn. But Eorlund felt with her disheveled appearance and lingering pain that Isra was here to find a home and survive her new life. That too was a noble endeavor. 

 

As Eorlund sent her off with the shield, he decided that Isra would determine whether her shield siblings knew about her family. 

 

Isra's body ached with a distinct soreness from her spar with Vilkas, only exacerbated by the weight of his weapons and armor. Yet, her lungs still filled with the spring air and she had finally found her home in Skyrim. Thoughts of war and prophecies were shoved to the back of her mind as she lays on her own bed, Aela's shield propped against the footboard as she waited for the Huntress to return. Though Eorlund told her to refuse errands, he gave her this one. Isra was content with running errands for the time being so long as she could save her coin. 

 

Isra read as she passed time, hoping that the books lying around the basement were free for the taking. She hadn't been able to read much of Skyrim's history in Hammerfell. She was delighted when Razzaq would bring her tomes from her home, which she yearned for greatly while in Hammerfell, but remembered her distant past where she did not care for the snow capped mountains and constant cold. Relegated to an object in her previous life, she enjoyed herself immensely, if not solely because this land embodied her liberation and agency. It was as if she could reach out and grab fistfuls of opportunity. 

 

Torvar grumbled, vaguely calling Isra's attention before she realized that he drunk was merely speaking in his sleep. She gulps down the tankard of wine on the end table, while the thud of the door and the booming laughter of Farkas, Vilkas's brother, stirs her lips from the rim. "You should have seen his face, Aela, you missed it."

 

"And I regret it. Perhaps you ought to take on the new grunts, Farkas."

 

"And scare them off before they even swing?"

 

"Well," Aela's husky voice alerts Isra, fingers curling about the shield. "You'd weed out the cowardly from the serious, big bear, it might not be so bad."

 

Farkas took stock of the Companions currently, and he had to agree. The best of the whelps were Ria and Athis.

 

"Perhaps..."

 

Njada slammed the door behind her, entering the underbelly of the ship with loud footfalls and stomping on the stones. She sulked to her bed, throwing her body atop the mattress. Torvar roused for a moment before lulling back into a sleep. Isra's eyes pulled from the leather bound book to the fuming young woman who had thrown her pillow on the dirty floor. Njada seemingly picked through the gaps in the boards on the ceiling, her wild eyes and countenance finding peace in this distinct annoyance. She darts to Isra, "Is there something to look at?" 

 

Isra's lips settled into a fine line as the angry body jolted in the bed, Njada looking like she would lunge and bite if Isra didn't soothe her with words or an apology. "No," Isra's eyes narrowed and her fingers curled against the edge of the shield. Placing the book face down on the bed, she strided away from the thick bitterness settling in the basement. Isra smelled a dour air around Njada, pure unpleasantness emanated from the harsh lines of her face and a crinkled nose. 

 

Spotting Aela in the distance, turning off into one of the many hallways, Isra follows her with the soft footfalls of moccasins on the stone unlike the lead feet above her wrassling in the mead hall. Perhaps they had visitors. Isra can't remember knocking, but Aela emerges from behind her chamber door. "Hmm?"

 

"Eorlund sent me with your shield," Isra raises it, a bit uncomfortable by the fierceness of the woman in front of her. Bulky muscles were perfectly oriented under pale, freckled skin, the bridge of Aela's nose prominent, but concealed under smudged warpaint. 

 

She tosses her red hair over her shoulder, a calculated, pointed gaze, nose, and alert eyes culminating to less of a woman and more of a fox. Aela shook her head, "You should not have to run errands like this, what you did for Vilkas was enough..."

 

"What you did to Vilkas was enough," Aela chuckles, her eyes losing their intensity with an amused sparkle. "It may not take much to anger him, but the thrashing you gave him today was delightful to watch. Do you think you could take Vilkas in a fight?" 

 

Isra piqued an eyebrow. Aela took the shield from her grasp and instead exchanged Isra for an impossible question. To herself, she thinks that she could possibly take Vilkas under the perfect circumstances. But yet, the universe did not prioritize her perfect circumstances. "Of course not. I don't have armor," Isra smiles weakly, "I look forward to learning from him."

 

Aela nods her head, "That attitude will get you far here. Say, let's find you a job to do to get yourself established..." A door in the mirroring hall interrupts Aela's banter and Farkas emerges, dressed in plainclothes for the afternoon rest he had planned to enjoy. His eyes were free of streaky oil-based paint and revealed an organic handsomeness. "Oh, I should also introduce you to Farkas..." Aela grips Isra's shoulder as she hollers, "Farkas!"

 

"Did you call me," the man answers to his name, causing Isra to tilt her head to the side, curious. 

 

"Of course we did, icebrain. This is the new whelp..."

 

"Isra," she fills in from Aela's lapse of memory. Isra has a burning desire to take as many jobs as possible so as to foster a reputation that doesn't involve her cutting away Vilkas's chestpiece. 

 

Farkas, what he lacked in recognition, made up for in the warm smile he gave Isra. There was pure wickedness in his well kept teeth, "I know her, come here little fawn, I'll give you my old gauntlets to use as pauldrons." He flings his arms across Isra's shoulders, leading her down the hall. "My room and Vilkas's room are on that hall. We've been here since we were pups."

 

"Interesting," Isra bites her lip, a bit overwhelmed by all the talking, "Did you enjoy yourselves?"

 

"Too much," his laugh originates in his stomach, vibrating and shaking Isra at his side. "Jergen brought us here... Kodlak made sure we were kept after when Jergen disappeared in the war. Don't let the old man convince you of battle stories, he limps because my brother and I wore him down."

 

"I bet you could," Isra buts him with her hip, smiling mischievously as she breaks away to grab a chunk of bread. 

 

Farkas beams at the new face. It wasn't often nowadays that whelps stuck around, most young people that filtered through the Companions were looking for free training to move on to the Legion or the Rebellion. However, this one, Farkas just knew would stay. There was no need to stew over it like his brother would. "You have no idea," he similarly plucks a bunch of grapes from the table, nestling the vine gently in thick, calloused hands. "By the way, thank you for irritating my brother, he was bothered by the training for a while."

 

"You're welcome, it sounds like he deserves it," Isra folds her arms, "Is he always this..."

 

"Miserable, no. Difficult, sometimes. He's a good man, just prone to these swings," Farkas shrugs away the matter and Isra hopes she hadn't intruded where whelps shouldn't. The Companions may not serve masters, but respect for hierarchy was indoctrinated into every guild. "Not me though. I'm not smart like him. I'm a bit slow. It's probably why I fare better."

 

"You're smart enough to not sulk, that's pretty impressive," Isra replied, "Now, Aela said something about a job..."

 

"Oh yes, go rough up Mikael at the Bannered Mare," Farkas flippantly suggests, plates clattering as he leans against the table and pushes it up against the wall with his weight. 

 

"Like, fight him?"

 

"Yeah, nothing more than a closed fist," Farkas's devilish teeth appear from his receding lips. "Go change out of that pretty dress and punch hard and quick, you've got nice teeth, it would be a shame just to have gums."

 

~~

 

Mikael lazed in the corner of the Bannered Mare with two goblets of vinegary wine under him. Out of the corner of her eye, Isra watched him play the lute terribly in the packed inn as a wandering grasp found the rears of Saadia and Carlotta as they passed. Isra herself was a shot or three of corn spirits down, sipping water to counteract the onset warmth and wooziness. Olfina sat next to her, lamenting and fawning over Jon all at once and confiding in Isra in between.

 

"Oh Isra, will you see Jon and I off when we finally run away together?" Olfina giggles. 

 

"Give me a time and a place in this lifetime, friend," Isra raises the flagon to the couple, Jon's arm that lazed around Olfina's waist tightening its grip. Decidedly, Isra had enough of her friend's propositions and finally locks eyes with her target. 

 

Uneasy on her feet, feeling the draft of the evening enter with new patrons, Isra approaches Mikael abruptly. "Mikael?"

 

"What do we owe the occasion to, beautiful noble?" He stumbles over his feet as he rises from the chair, fumbling to embrace Isra before she sidesteps him and circles around him again.

 

Olfina and Jon are called to attention, Olfina's thick eyebrows perch in confusion. "Is this a joke?"

 

"I don't have much of a reputation in Skyrim yet, but I'm working on that, one sweet lady at a time, witch," Mikael sneers as he dramatically rests his hands on his hip. 

 

"Isra!" Olfina calls over the bustle of the mild revelry. Isra ignores her. 

 

"I've been sent here to resolve a dispute," Isra purses her lips together, closing her eyes and punching Mikael in the temple, continuing to do so with ease as the drunken man refused to fight. 

 

The inn collectively jeers with excitement, Isra picking the creepy man up by his shirt collar and throwing him to the center of the room. A ring of onlookers encircled the two them, mead and merriment abundant with the former staining the wood. Mikael did not have many fans in Whiterun, it appeared. Above all the voices, Olfina screeched, "Hit 'em where it counts!"

 

Isra stopped for a moment, shocked at what she had just did. She just threw a man. Her amazement with her strength is undercut when she took in the stock of her prey, barely older than she was and thin as a rail. It wasn't that impressive. 

 

Carlotta pushes her from behind, jolting her into focus and back to pummeling Mikael. "Keep your hands up!" Isra had supposed the icy grocer had ordered the hit, Mikael stationed himself in the market center, singing love songs to Carlotta all day, even lewd tunes, in front of her daughter. 

 

Isra punches his stomach, kicks, spits, anything that feels like she is fighting against the weakly fighting bard. Alcohol inhibited Mikael, but it enraged Isra. It wasn't long until the bard cowarded on the floor with his palms outstretched, "I submit, I submit!" 

 

Delivering her final blow, she plants a foot in between his ribs, "You know what you have to do." 

 

For but a moment, Isra pitied Mikael, humiliated in front of everyone in town as they cheered for her, an outsider. Uthgherd thrusted another shot of corn spirits into her hands. Mikael had it coming for him, though. Harassing women and grabbing at them like meat. He was a dirty, sleazy, creep and Isra was glad she had beaten him up. 

 

Olfina waltzed over and hugged her with her blue eyes bright like the white sun against the oceans.  How nice to have a taught, warm body melt against hers.  In her gilded moment, Olfina tucked strands of curls that were plastered to Isra's forehead with sweat. Whatever words of congratulations were lost in thick honey. Isra downed her shot and with her other hand and extended to tickle Olfina's cheek. Lips dragging closer to one another are momentarily sated when they meet one another, but this content does not last long. Hungrily, Olfina's body slacked as their lips parted and crashed together again. And again. If the crowd was enthused by Isra roughing up Mikael, they were positively ecstatic about the two women sharing bitter, alcoholic tongues. Ulfberth and another Nord lifted Isra onto their shoulders after she parted from Olfina, cheering wildly as another flagon of mead was poured out for everyone. "To Isra!" Jon proclaims over the sounds of the dying applause of fellow rebel rousers. 

 

Olfina lingered on her lips, her underlying taste bitter, like snowberries. Which made Isra sad and happy all at once. 

~~

Olfina and Jon hoist Isra between them, dragging her from the inn late in the morning. Positively delighted and too drunk to stand correct, Isra clambers through the streets of Whiterun, yellow windows subsiding to the darkness of rest in the residential areas. After a night of dancing, fighting, and revelry, she is sore but can't quite feel it yet. There is no way Isra anticipates the next morning at this stage of drunkeness. How she'd traverse Coldharbor next morning with the aches and pains of body, head, and stomach as her body dealt with acute poisoning.

 

"Isra," Jon chuckles, "Please hold on to us! You'll kill yourself on these stairs!"

 

"I hate stairs," Isra slurs wavering on her feet as Olfina holds up a waterskin to Isra's lips, showing lines of dehydration. "I want to climb up the hill."

 

Olfina sighs, "Jon, we can both hold her. Get her legs and I'll get her arms."

 

"No! I am not a sack..."

 

"1... 2... 3..."

 

"of FLOUR!" Isra shrieks, her body swinging between the two lovers. The motion was like a hammock... Oh how she loved swinging in the hammock outside of Razzaq's home. The knotted fabric dug into thin dresses as the breeze blew above and below her. Isra felt like she slept in air the nights that she'd spend in the hammock strung between the two hemlocks.

 

As they approach the doors to Jorrvaskr, either the memories of Razzaq or the motion had infected Isra with a rotting, nauseous stomach. Her abdomen churns with distaste as her limbs thrash like a cat. On her hands and knees, Isra felt the contents of a honeyed night empty into a lavender bush and cobblestones, too sweet to contain. Jon opens the door and bolts for the downstairs. 

 

Olfina, likewise, fell to her hands and knees. Upon seeing Isra heave, Olfina emptied her stomach in disgust, albeit, with more dignity. Olfina tries to stop her friend, who crawls on hands and knees through the doors of Jorrvaskr. By the time Farkas had emerged with Jon, the large twin peals in an echoing laughter and Isra had managed to stand up and lean herself against the door frame. The brother that follows him is less amused. "Jon, what happened to her?" Farkas questions, eyebrows sitting high on his forehead.

 

Jon merely shakes his head, rubbing Isra's back as her knuckles whiten supporting herself against the beam. "I'll have Olfina tell you, can you walk her home?"

 

"Of course!" Farkas nods. He knew about their forbidden love, most of Whiterun did, which is why he didn't understand the demanding secrecy. It wasn't uncommon for Jon to ask him or Ulfberth to walk Olfina home. Olfina found it insulting that Jon assumed she couldn't care for herself, but obliged nonetheless to protect his masculinity and left with Farkas.

 

"Could you..." Jon's eyes traveled to Vilkas and then to Isra, both immediately uneasy about the implication.

 

Isra glanced up and saw stormy eyes, conflicted and heavy with their fatigue. Like his brother, he was quite handsome when he wasn't caked in warpaint. But even then, they were still attractive when their eyes were sooted with the black tint of grease. Vilkas nods and Isra scans over his head, a dark black for his age. How old were they? Lines etched on a face told Isra that he was older than she, but by how much? Her repulsed instinct towards the sullen man was hampered by pure curiousity and beauty. By Gods, this man was so beautiful... The blueness of early morning shadowed his jawline, the sprouts of a beard poking through the skin. Vilkas takes her arm under his shoulder blades, supporting her with sharp and defined muscles that bulged from use, and even his barking order that sounded next was drizzled in appeal... "Cooperate! You're letting out the warmth..."

 

Isra collapses from under him, her body releasing the tension that kept her taut and upright with her fatigue. Vilkas groans, the woman like a knock-kneed fawn wobbly maneuvering her first steps. He was annoyed by her state of drunkeness, but relieved she wasn't an angry drunk like Njada. Or a sad drunk, like Ria. It would be easy for Vilkas to get her in bed... But he shouldn't have to do that anyways! 

 

Who would let her get so inebriated? He recalls multiple nights of his youth where Kodlak and Skjor had the round up the twins to neutralize his anger. How could Isra be so stupid? In a town where she just arrived?It was a good thing she had Olfina and Jon, VIlkas thinks to himself, settling her into an open whelp's bed.

 

Rage burns beneath the surface of a man with the self-regulation of a wolf. She'd be gone within the month, just like Jergen. Like the Dragonborn. Like Arnbjorn. Like the three whelps before her. Soon, even Kodlak would be gone, relegated to the hunting fields for all eternity to chase after small game... His soul never at rest. He didn't have the time to cater to drunks!

 

He turns away, but a pang in his heart prompts him to turn around. Curled hair splays out around her pillow, framing a gentle face that lost it's defiant pucker in sleep. Candlelight danced on her neck and the shallow rise and fall of her chest matched Vilkas's own. Goosebumps prick his skin. Uneasiness masses in a lump in the center of his throat as his eyes trace to her collarbone. His eyes trace a scar at her hairline, highlighted by the orange flame, the white line had almost completely subsided back into the skin, as life allowed wounds to fade with the caveat of a scar to remind us to tread more carefully... Or fight more fiercely. He inhales her maddening scent. Dragon's tongue, cinnamon, and cloves doused her body. Sweet. Bitter. Fiery. 

 

He's extracted from his trance when she stirs, pulling herself inwards to combat the nighttime draftiness that plagued even late spring in Skyrim. Though he simmers, he can't bear to she her shiver and Vilkas finds himself pulling the pelts over her exposed skin. Edges of her lips twitch upwards as the pelts are prodded by the dips and curves of muscle, a layer of fat, and thick thighs. Vilkas rips away his gaze, depositing a few cure poison potions from around the Basement in her bedside table for the horrendous hangover pending... 

 

Farkas watches his brother, amused by him putting the potions in the drawer. The peaks of Vilkas's cheekbones tinted red when he whipped around and saw his brother. "Do I have a story for you, brother," Farkas smirks. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for making it this far. Finals and general stress got the better of me these past several weeks. So I took some time away from the internet and was able to crank out some chapters... Which may make them read a little mechanically. I'm sorry about that. 
> 
> I'm wondering if it's better to post small chapters more frequently or large chapters more sporadically. Let me know what y'all think about that. I personally can't wait until the next chapter! It gets so spicy.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summer in Jorrvaskr leads to heightened tempers and less clothing!

~~

Isra had settled into a routine. Wake up. Eat. Practice her archery. Eat again. Read. Accept a job. Drink. Finish the job that night or the next morning. Eat. Drink. Oil her armor. Sleep. Pepper in Jon, Olfina, Ria, and Farkas and her life had settled into similar monotony as it had in Riverwood. 

 

Spring receded to the beginnings of summer. Warm, but not unbearably so as the summers had been in Hammerfell. There was no need to tend to a fire in the center of the mead hall and the doors stayed open at night to let the breeze filter through the overturned ship. Farkas and Skjor no longer lingered in their armor in the evening and exhanged thick steel plates lined with pelts for the comfort and breeziness of linens. 

 

Nights crept later and later and her friends Jon and Olfina spoke of Falkreath. And Ivarstead. And Markarth. And Solitude. And Riften. Isra doubted that they'd leave Whiterun, both born to influential families and both preferring the neutral city. The summer heat entertains fantasies, but summer fades into fall and the harshness of winter. Jon had taken Isra with him to look at rings, hoping Isra would offer him an inclination of what Olfina would care for. She’d care for the Amulet of Mara, but Isra kept her lips pursed in silence.

 

Farkas teased her of dungeon raids and plundering, saying that her trial was not far off and she best stumble into a cave soon to prepare herself. All Isra had to do was catch the big man off guard and crawl against his skin like a spider to repay his teasing. They drank together, they laughed together, and they trained together, Farkas showing her the mechanics of heavy armor and Ria the art of the shield. She excelled at neither, but was grateful for the information. 

 

Vilkas was distant and ever sour. Whenever their paths crossed, it was a crinkle of the nose or a tongue lashing. Isra saw that their paths did not cross when they need not. Yet, they sat close to each other at dinner and couldn't help but squabble after her few glasses of wine.

 

Isra wondered when her trial would be. It had to be nearing. She could hit the target more often than not now, most of the time honing in on the innermost rings. Three weeks ago, she had her first bullseye, now if she didn't strike the bullseye more than twenty times, it was a bad day. Her leathers fit her like a second skin, contoured to her body like a member of the Thieves Guild. Surely, it attracted attention from the guard, but she hoped that one day she would overcome the reputation of her armor and they'd know who she really was, like the Whiterun guard had. Ulfberth shook his head when Adrianne had let the woman order the armor, pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling. "I hope she makes it, I really do."

 

Adrianne pats her husband's back softly, a smile tinging the corners of her mouth. "It wouldn't be the first time a stranger surprised us, Ulfberth," she tutted, her mind drifting towards a white haired woman that flitted through Whiterun a year earlier, slaying the dragon at the Western Watchtower and becoming Thane before whisking away. Out of the window of her shop stood Breezehome, kept by Lydia and desolate. 

 

"It wouldn't be the first time a good person dies. Do you really think she's fit for Skyrim?"

 

Adrianne shrugs, too busy with the stresses of Ulfberth's anxieties and the Imperial order to trouble herself with pessimism. "She's Nord, or at least half-Nord. This is her land. The armor is good and light and she is strong."

 

She cups the face of Ulfberth, the father of their unborn child, and offers him a hopeful smile. It was his anxieties about war and his newfound guilt about unnecessary death fueled by the birth of his child into this uncertain landscape that reassured Adrianne of his gentle nature. "Big bear. Kodlak doesn't accept those into the ranks of the Companions to be fodder. She has something we can't see in this shop."

 

~~

 

Isra welps as the bowstring smacks against her arm, something she still did after all of this practice. Aela would scold her from the sidelines, saying that Isra practiced wrong and far too often. Aela's eyes said what her pursed lips didn't and Isra frustration surmounts. Cursing, she throws the bow on the ground and stomps to the table, taking a long swig of wine. She bites her lip with the bitterness and exhales, taking the stock of the target. "Today is not your day," Farkas loudly laughs, patting Isra on her sore back. 

 

Eliciting a wince, Isra turns around and playfully shoves the large man, "That hurts!" She whines, muscles aching form their constant use. At night, her hands radiated with pain and it was all she could do to keep herself from whimpering.

 

Grimacing from behind the pages of a thick tome, Vilkas simmers with the presence of the girl. He was surprised she had stayed around so long, he had this nagging feeling in the pit of his existence that told him that the girl was orientated towards other places. Perhaps Hammerfell. Perhaps Windhelm. There was something that she hid in her light demeanor, a depth that exposed itself when she read or when she spoke with Athis about distant lands. Farkas was immune to this cynicism, openly teasing Isra and doting on her whenever possible. Vilkas had spoken to him about this, and Farkas reminded him that she was a shield sister. "Perhaps the bow is not your weapon," Aela evenly states. 

 

"But I need to know how to use one," Isra replies, picking at cheese and leeks, a vague hunger creeping along her abdomen, but not ravenous. 

 

Aela looks at the target. "No one becomes a master in a summer. You're too used to it."

 

Aela clear her throat, taking in the consistency of the girl. Her bright eyes and her focused state, she broods like Vilkas when she's puzzled, insatiably. Isra had come far in the time since she arrived, they approached the thickness of the summer, the humidity plastering sweat to skin, armor, and temperaments. "Vilkas. You ought to train the girl."

 

Vilkas emerges from his shallow state of devotion to finding the cure for Kodlak. How was he supposed to save Kodlak when he was constantly interrupted by those who refused or were too slow to help? "Athis and Torvar are sufficient," he dismisses. 

 

Aela shakes her head fervently, using a tone Vilkas hates and respects when the she-wolf is determined about something. It was then that he knew that resisting Aela's wishes would be difficult, if not impossible. "She shows promise."

 

"But does she show skill?"

 

Isra crunches on a leek, holding a napkin to her mouth as she finishes chewing. "Did you show skill before you were ever taught?"

 

Their eyes met and he narrows his to slits. "In fact, I did. But it was the work that let me finesse my craft over the years I have lived, whelp."

 

Before Aela could say the same, Isra rises to her feet and perches herself against a post. The conversation was between her and Vilkas now. "Have I not proven my devotion? While Torvar heaves into his bucket for the better part of the day, I am out here for the first and last hours of the day practicing my craft."

 

Vilkas sneers, tucking the hawk feather into the page he was reading. "And Aela says you don't practice correctly, so what's it worth?"

 

"It's worth to relize that we are..."

 

"There is no we," Vilkas's teeth come together.

 

"Brother!"

 

"She has not had her trial. She is not a full member of the Companions." Vilkas folds his arms across his chest, voice haggard and eyes puffy from his restlessness. He felt the beast clawing at the inside of his flesh whenever Isra was near, now he was positively festering in his own curse. He could sense the coarse hairs of the wolf pusing against his skin. 

 

Farkas approaches Vilkas, nostrils flared with fury, "I'll train her then and do my duty. Isra," he calls the girl to attention, "Go fetch the sack under my bed with the practice swords."

 

Isra silently nods, her anger surfacing in her red cheeks while Farkas glowers at his twin. After the doors come together, Farkas jolts his brother to his feet, fingering curling around the thin linen of summer clothes and the table and the book clatter in the fine dirt. Defensively, Vilkas pushes against Farkas. Skjor, who was indifferent in the conversations beforehand, boomed, "Hey! Are you both teenagers again?"

 

"You could've just said you were busy, you cock!" Farkas hollers, hands curling into fists by his sides.

 

Aela nods, "She's going to have her trial soon, Vilkas. She shows more initiative than most of the other whelps..."

 

"Tell me why I had to haul her into bed the first night she was given a task!" Vilkas argues, wondering why everyone was so invested in this girl who stumbled across the order, likely for a free place to eat and sleep. 

 

"That was once," Farkas frowns, "And don't tell me you've never had to lean on me to get downstairs."

 

The was a long silence. So the girl was to have her trial soon? He supposed that by the end of the month she would be a full ranking member of the Companions. He knows that the girl and Kodlak had spoken last night at length about the history of the Companions and about other things that Vilkas couldn't decipher. Words swirled around about "Sand. Hammerfell and Stormcloaks," but nothing definitive. "Vilkas... She's got..."

 

Vilkas knew what she was going to say. It was what Kodlak told him when the white bearded man didn't want to talk about her anymore. "I'm sorry Aela. Strength of spirit doesn't stop her from getting killed. It isn't going to put coin in our pockets. It isn't going to recuperate the costs of housing her when she decides to run off to her husband again."

 

"Well, not training her adequately will get her killed too, Vilkas!" Aela exclaims, faltering as they can hear her approaching the stairs, training items jumbling around the burlap sack she lugged.

 

"So she's really going to have her trial? Will Farkas or you lead it?" He regarded Aela, but more so Skjor. 

 

"Farkas."

 

"Of course," Vilkas nodded, the girl approaching quickly so he added his last argumentative punch, "Try not to sleep with her, brother. It might impair whatever thoughts you can muster about her worthiness." 

 

The door opens as Farkas seethes, arm coiling back to sock Vilkas in the jaw, but an interventionist mediary saves the twin's jawline. "You make yourself miserable Vilkas, running yourself in these circles. I'm not going to have your misery spilling onto this promising warrior," Aela sneers, not fully realizing the girl had emerged from the underbelly of the ship. 

 

Isra bites her lip, grip slackening around the neck of the burlap. Vilkas gathers his book, hawk feather fibers tickling in one of the breezes strong enough to cut through both humidity and tension. "A noble deed, Aela." Vilkas scoffs as he slides past Isra in the doorframe, slamming the wood together as he retreats to his study downstairs. 

 

Farkas bites his tongue, resisting the urge to follow Vilkas and beat him or clam him down. Perhaps both. 

 

With unnerving, steely eyes, Skjor watches the newblood. Whenever he saw her in between his jobs, Aela, and the hunt, he saw a young girl in many respects. Isra carried her vulnerability like that sack, out of the frame of a first glance, but still a burden to herself. Her eyes always had a sheen of tears threatening to spill onto the peaks of her cheeks still supple with youth. All underlying was this terrible ambition that that overwhelmed her fledging wings still wet from the protection of the eggshell. Yet, the past several months she had dried herself and was a distinctive force among the whelps.  

 

So when she pauses and takes in the training yard and says, "I don't belong here, do I?" Skjor's heart instantaneously and instinctively disagrees. 

 

"Kodlak thinks you were plopped into our laps by the Nine for a reason, girl. I'm not sure about the Nine, or the Eight," Skjor's shoulders rise and fall, "But you have a rightful place here, earned of your own doing."

 

The leather nags at her dampened skin, chaffing against her joints and her thighs where they came together. "Kodlak might be right, perhaps I was sent here to disrupt your family," Isra rolls her eyes.

 

Farkas tenses, he could sense the tangible sadness and the guilt that someone he'd call his friend was suffering. However, he knew he'd mess up if he said anything, so he let Aela interject. "We are a family, but we follow no master. Vilkas is not someone you should concern yourself with. I apologize for him. His opinions are like a fish on a dock."

 

Farkas frowns. "And they're wrong. You deserve more than Ria and Torvar to spar with."

 

Skjor observed a certain brokeness in her when she failed to live up to Vilkas's approval. A part of him couldn't help but assume she was pining for Vilkas's affection or, at the very least, was attracted to him. The twins were handsome and took lovers all over Skyrim. Whenever Skjor had the pleasure of accompanying the twins, women and men alike would try to rest their heads by them at night. It made him feel a certain pain for the women and men that were attracted to the leaner, intellectual twin because of the intensity of spirit he carried around unlike his bulky twin who was infectiously light. 

 

Ria and Njada were the same way around Vilkas when they first arrived, but their infatuation ran its course over the following weeks exposed to Vilkas's moods. They eventually moved on to newer, less complicated flings. "Come sit with me," Skjor moves to sit at the main table, pouring himself and the girl a glass of wine. Isra joins him, tossing the sack to Farkas who nods in approval.

 

"I hate seeing such a young woman tormented by that oaf and her past," Skjor sips, struggling to form a relationship with her. He wasn’t a comforting presence, and though he had accepted this a long time ago, he still felt the urge to lighten this woman’s pain. 

 

Aela's teeth come together about the same time that Isra's does. She jolts from her seat, standing up immediately in a similar bout of emotion to Vilkas. 

 

"I don't know what you've heard about me," Isra begins, "But don't think for a minute that I am tormented."

~~

 

"She's better at the sword!" Farkas boasts, Aela sitting clsoer to the fledging at dinner this evening. "Isra was whipping me around quite nice. I think she'd be even better with a greatsword."

 

Aela raises her eyebrows in shock, the mead softening a hard face, melting into something more indicative of her malleable heart, "How? Isra can't be any taller than... than Ria! In fact, she's a few inches shorter than Ria."

 

Farkas shook his head, "She needs something larger to start with. Then she can go smaller." He loudly chews on his mammoth steak and passes another bottle of mead to Isra. 

 

"Oh, I probably shouldn't!" Isra chuckles, but doesn't give back the bottle of mead. She removes the cork and takes a large swig anyways. 

 

"We ought to get some wheat spirits. Or potato spirits."

 

"We ought to have some Sujamma," Athis slurs, well on his way to a headache in the morning. 

 

Isra takes another bite of her steak, washing it all down with a large dose of the mead. "Potato spirits! How lovely."

 

A bottle procures and is passed around the table. Isra pours some into the fresh snowberry juice that cropped up in Carlotta's stall. 

 

The night devolves into a summer revelry, the mead hall glowing yellow from the small fire in the center to roast the various meats and to chase away the chill of the plains. The midnight sky above them was inky blue, speckled with stars. Dancing and drumming punctuated the talk of old men and war stories. Yet, Isra remained on the periphery and eyed Farkas. 

 

She had heard Vilkas's insult earlier today from behind the door. As much as she treasured the time she spent being her own woman, the ache for skin atop of skin overtook her chest. Her foggy mind affirmed this carnal need and decided that sleeping with someone she worked closely with was a good idea. 

 

So she snuck behind him and rubbing his shoulders as he beat against the drum, recalling to the night Olfina had pressed against her and they shared tongues. Oh! Her mind wandered to Jon and Olfina tonight, their pale bodies splayed out on the plains, their faces bathed in the light of the stars...

 

And she imagined Farkas. Her nose picked up cedar on him, having bathed after their training session. Isra falls away, heading downstairs and meeting Farkas's eyes one more time before descending the steps. She hoped she wasn't too subtle, or too platonic, or he too simple to catch onto the clues she left for him. 

 

She waited at the table downstairs, finishing off the head dizzying drink she had poured herself earlier. It took five minutes, but the drumming passed on to Skjor and Farkas emerged in the basement of Jorrvaskr. "You left early, is everything ok?"

 

Isra nods, "Yeah, I'll probably drink some down here before I go to bed. It's just really loud up there."

 

Farkas laugh emanates from his core, and that's what endears him to Isra, "Come with me little fawn," he smiles. 

 

He leads him to his room and pulls out a bottle of firewine and two flagons. Pouring the red, cinnamony liquid into the two glasses, he grins, "To your upcomming trial!"

 

"Aye!" She smirks, so exicted that it meant her trial was coming. Basking in affirmation, she and Farkas down the entire bottle over the course of the next hour, talking and giggling to the infuriation of Vilkas across the hall. 

 

As their drunkeness progresses, they come closer to one another, bodies teasing one another as they nearly touched and immediately retracted. Isra flops her head of curls onto his shoulder. The warmth of the wine lended to a warmth of the genitals. Whatever judgement they had when they were sober, Farkas a bit slow and Isra young, was decimated when they were drunk. Farkas lazily kissed Isra, whispering to her, "Go get your pillow, I'm tired."

 

He followed Isra and on the way back, they kissed timidly at the opening of the hallway, the downstairs still void of everyone, even Kodlak enjoying the summer upstairs, save for Vilkas. Linen was rough under Isra's fingertips as she traced the muscular planes of his abdomen, eventually dropping the pillow onto the dusty stone. She hushes, almost unsure and entirely timid, "I want you."

 

Farkas's eyes sparkle a holistic blue while his teeth arranged in a devilish grin. Farkas lifted her up onto the table, clumsily toppling over snuffed candlesticks and bags of apples. Each individual fruit smacked on the stone floor, bruising each piece. Large hands dug into hips and thighs thick as winter quilts. Like the green skin of the apples, this skin too would bruise with an imprint of hands not meant to hold her. Hungry mouths found each other, drunken and sloppy like old hounds, but their inbriation made them think they were seasoned lovers. He still tasted of honeyed mead after the adulteration of cinnamon wine, yet Isra tasted of fire. 

 

She giggles as Farkas's stubble grazes her neck, snorting as he tickles her sides, "Your hair is so curly," he whisper speaks, his speech slurred beyond reasonable comprehension. A half hardened appendage presses against her as Farkas tucks her hair behind her ear. 

 

"Let me go get..."

 

"No, don't go get your comb, your bedclothes. Nothing," Farkas leans in closer, fingers fiddling with the lacing of her shirt as he loses patience and grabs her breast over top of the shirt. Hardened nipples prodded his hand, crumpling and resurfacing with the pressure of the fist. Lips meet her ear, "I want you. Now, Isra." 

 

Isra pulls him closer, wrapping her legs around him. Though he said it, his cock was still only half hardened as he sucked on her neck. She sighed which Farkas interpretted as a moan, realizing that he wouldn't be able to satisfy her itch tonight. "These damn, ties!" Farkas fights against the knot at the peak of Isra's chest, finally giving up and tearing away the fabric and exposing a single nipple for him to twit and circlel with his tongue. 

 

Isra yelps in satisfaction, his cool mouth soothing her burning skin before his teeth close around the sensitive skin and she screeches from the pain and the bolts of pleasure that coursed through her. “That was an expensive shirt!” The sounds ignited Farkas and he flattened her further against the wall.   

 

In the middle of her bliss, stirred by the loud tear of fabric and the mewls of pleasure, another factor sealed her perpetual state of need. The door to her right opens abruptly, so much so that Farkas halts and attempts to disentangle himself from Isra, stumbling over his feet as he does so. Isra could smell the sourness of Vilkas exuded from his clenched fists, only exacerbated by the migraine and the restlessness of the previous nights. "Farkas!" he chides as he comes between his brother from Isra's flesh. Yet, his gaze lingered on Isra's exposed chest for an undetected moment and his mouth went dry. It was all Vilkas could do to turn back and deal with Farkas. His moods lately had been so extreme that women were repulsed by him, and Vilkas wasn't sure he had ever gone so long without the company of a woman since he started engaging women in such a way. 

 

His brother defensively pushes back, shoulders rippling with the large and defined muscles his twin lacked. "You should mind your own."

 

Isra stumbles off of the table, nearly falling to her knees as she finds support against the wall. She raises the shirt to cover her breasts and opens her mouth to protest before silenced by a single raised hand from Farkas.

 

"You're both drunk," Vilkas's forehead wrinkles, his stance more rigid than before. "You can't mess around with whelps like this when they're too drunk to walk."

 

Farkas nods, going over to help Isra back into her bed, but is stopped by Vilkas. "I'll help her."

 

Isra shakes her head, resisting Vilkas from wrapping her arm around his shoulders, "No." Firmly, Isra walks ahead, wavering, but still able to conduct herself unlike her first night. "I don't need help."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isra has her trial and learns about the Companions.

Isra found the greatsword to her liking. Farkas smirked as she hacked her away across the yard, impressed at how nimble she was with the blade. Agility made up for what she lacked in brute strength. The other twin watched her form as she danced across the yard with his brother. Hawk eyes narrowed at the occassional lift of her linens, revealing his brother's thumbprints on her hips as they yellowed around the edges. Vilkas winced at every moment Farkas failed to finesse his student, dissecting each and every move the two made and counting the mistakes to pass the heat of the afternoon.

Vilkas despised himself for caring so much. There was a certain, crippling absence in his mind, his focus wandering Oblivion. Kodlak so desperately needed a cure-- his father! Vilkas needed the cure, surely he would explode if he contained himself for another moon. And all he could focus on was his brother's thumbprints on a whelp's hips. How he had remained at his desk last night for so long remains a mystery, he seethed from the moment the cork popped from the bottle of Fire wine. He coveted his brother, but Vilkas could never admit that to himself.   
  
After all, she was not exceptionally beautiful. Vilkas had trysts with countless women. Saadia and Helga stuck out among his favorites in terms of experience. Lisette among the most beautiful. He made note to visit Solitude often and soon, the wolf clawwing against his skin from the inside, only sated by flesh or hunting...

"Vilkas," Skjor hushes so that the surrounding members couldn't hear them, pulling Vilkas from his self-saboteur. It wasn't like Skjor cared if anyone around them heard, but the man had learned to speak softly around Vilkas in the past months, the lean twin always poised to bite. Njada picked at her fingernails with a dagger and Torvar reclined in a chair with his eyes closed, not particularly interested in training before them nor the talk of the Circle. "How long are you going to stare?"

"Hmmm?"

"You might as well train her yourself if you're going to watch like this," Skjor's forehead crinkled into four distinct lines that appeared when he was deep in thought.

"I was thinking about that. Farkas isn't doing such a great job."

"Oh really?"

"Yes," Vilkas convinces himself. "He isn't aggressive enough."

Skjor chuckles, rolling his eyes. "Those bruises beg to differ."

Vilkas's jaw snaps together, Skjor delighted by the waves of rage billowing off of the twin. While Skjor had learned to tread lightly, it was always amusing to prod the wolf. "That was inappropriate."

Skjor nods in agreement, "Surely. However, Mara says it's a sin to covet your brother, correct?"

"Fuck Mara. When did you start to care about the Aedra?"

Farkas attempts to sneak behind Vilkas, the effort undermined by exhausted huffing and steel boots clanking against the porch. He grips Vilkas's shoulder, giving it a slight rustle, "She'll wear you out."

Vilkas rolls his eyes, spotting Aela approaching the girl on the perimeter of the training field. They'd just been approached by a member of the Bards College with information on a fragment of Wuuthrad. Decidedly, that would be the trial of Isra al-Abbas. And Farkas would lead it.

~~

"Looks like someone'd been digging around here. And recently. Tread lightly, Be careful around burial stones. I don't want to haul you back to Jorravaskr on my back," Farkas recites as they descend the circular set stone steps to the burial crypt. The heat of the morning had yet to settle on the plains. Isra had picked all the Dragon's Tongue she could find on the way to the cairn, the pack rustling slightly. She had borrowed it from Jon, who was more than happy to oblige. He even lined the pack with trail rations and dried venison. "Remember what you were taught," Farkas reminds her, patting her shoulder with a reassuring smile. She made a note to remember who helped her get here.

They had not spoken about that night. Isra supposed he didn't remember it or was reprimanded harshly. Either way, there was a tangible distnace between her and one of her closest friends in Whiterun, and it sowed salt in her soul. All of these negative emotions created a stormy mind when they descended the steps of the cairn.

Yet, she was able to compartmentalize, focusing herself with deep, even breaths. When she entered the cairn, it was all she could do not tov loudly gasp. A large cavern expanded before her, glistening with condensation like cracked geodes. She crouched as Farkas had, readying an arrow in her bow to check and make sure the area was clear. After stalking the perimeter and noting her surroundings, they deemed it safe and Isra went back to a chest at the base of a sleeping roll. Fetching a few lockpicks from her pocket, she manages to go through about half of her stock before cracking the chest.

Humming softly, Farkas turned his back to Isra as she shoved an emerald, septims, and steel arrows into her quiver. "What are you doing?" Isra whispers.

"I'm judging your honor, remember?"

Isra shrugs nochalantly, catching up with Farkas and progressing deeper into the Cairn, strands of ivy tickling her red cheeks. "Taking bandits' treasure is fair game. What am I supposed to do? Leave it here for the next bandit?"

Stalking, they snuck about the burial chambers as best they could. Farkas could only be so quiet. Death permeated the damp walls, her stomach threatening to empty itself from a mixture of adrenaline and stench. Bones rattled, animating as an entire skeleton peeled itself from the wall. Isra watched in horror as she releases an arrow aimed at the neck. A groan erupts from the sinewy corpse that sprints towards Farkas.

Farkas swipes down once with his greatsword, the bones scattering across the stone floors. The noise prompted a chain reaction of moaning bodies to come to life. Undead blue eyes search for the source that rose them from the dead. Isra's heart leaps against the confines of chest and lungs as she knocks an arrow to prepare herself. Farkas does the same.

She dispells three on her own and swells with pride, their bodies dusted with arrows and hacks of the greatsword only to turn and see that Farkas killed five. Regardless, she collects what bones she can grind later and sell to Carlotta. Healing what she can and bandaging one particularly deep cut, Farkas hurries her along to a room lined with thrones from a past time.

Ornate Nordic designs circle the edge of the room, poking out from beneth the curtains of ivy all culminating to a star shaped platform at the center of the room. Two iron gates stop them from advancing. "Let's look around for a lever," Farkas yawns as he cracks his spine, each joint loudly popping as he mosies about the circumference.

Vegetation seeps from cracks in the stone and outside breeze filters through the deep earth. Meandering into an alcove furnished with a black, Nordic table, she sweeps up the vials of healing potions and throws them into the satchel for later use. Amongst cobwebs and a gibberish tome, she spotted the glimmer of bronze nestled into cut away stone. Brushing away the cobwebs, she delightfully finds a lever and pulls it without thinking.

"Now look what you've gotten yourself into," Farkas groans following the loud thud. Isra slowly turns and sees that she's trapped in the alcove. Anxiety riddles her to her core. What if she failed her trial? What if she was stuck in here?

"Just sit tight, I'll find the release," Farkas reassures her.

Footfalls rang from the adjoining room and Farkas readies his greatsword. Isra's eyes widen and her mind can only think one word. Trap. "Just sit tight." Farkas reassures her once again, collected with the approach.

Isra knocks an arrow, propping the end of the bow between the grates. "It's time to die, dog," A man's voice spat at Farkas, his gleaming sword pointed at the stubble on the twin's chin. Five people rushed the large warrior, all standing on a semicricle around him. Isra had this nagging sense that even Farkas couldn't face these five bandits and let a helpless arrow shoot towards the opposite wall, missing her target entirely.

"We knew you'd be coming here," A woman in leather taunted.

"Your mistake, Companion," Another tssked. Although Farkas had amassed prominence as a formiddable warrior in the province, she was surprised that the five knew he belonged to the order. It wasn't as if the Companions went around airing their affairs to others.

"You wear that armor, you die," The fourth smirked as they all began to round Farkas. It was odd because Farkas was the only member of the Circle outside of Aela that wore standard armor. Her sister's housecarl even wore that armor.   
  
Isra fires another arrow and manages to graze the man who spoke first. "Your friend over there will do nicely. Fiesty, but nothing some leg irons won't subdue."

Farkas grits his teeth together, grip tightening on his greatsword. "Killing you will make for an excellent story."

"None of you will be alive to tell it," Farkas snarls through clenched teeth as Isra knocks another arrow. Yet, she lowers her bow when she beholds her dear friend.

Before her very eyes, the man threw down his sword. His body contorts, armor falling away from his body that grows and takes the form of a beast. Dark black hair bristled out of pale, muscular skin and his wholesome voice is replaced by a guttural growl of an animal. Isra draws back her bowstring once she's composed herself, but by the time that happens, Farkas the beast has already demolished the five bandits.

Farkas was a werewolf. Were the entire Companions werewolves? Did they all feast upon human flesh? The conversation of blood that Vilkas and Kodlak had when she arrived was brought back to her senses as she tries to process... Even Kodlak was a werewolf! The man's fatherly embrace and wisdom a mere masquerade for his desire from human flesh. She didn't even notice that Farkas had freed her from the alcove, and she certainly didn't lower her aim.

"Isra," Farkas soothes, his hands palm side up and facing her. He was completely naked, the armor in a heap at the precipice of the room. "I didn't intend to scare you..."

"What did you think would happen!"

Farkas frowns, "I would've died if I hadn't changed. You would have certainly died too."

"What was that?" Isra lowers her bow, but certainly doesn't drop the arrow in the quiver. She stares at Farkas and is disappointed that his true nature had to sully such a beautiful figure. He placed his hands over his genitals with a snicker of modesty.

"It's a blessing given to some of us."

"A blessing?" Isra finally drops the arrow, not even bothering to retrieve it at this point to save for later.

"Isra... Agh!" Farkas turns quickly and finds his clothing and armor, beginning to put it on piece by piece. "I can promise you that we don't eat babies... It's just the Silver Hand... I'm sorry that I scared you."

"Do you expect me to become a werewolf?"

"Gods no!" Farkas exclaims, but does so quietly now that he knows that the Silver Hand occupied the Cairn. "Only those in the Circle have the beastblood. Prove your honor to be a Companion first. "Eyes on the prey, not the horizon." We're trying to find the cure anyways. We should keep moving."

"Who are the Silver Hand?" Vanja asks again, beginning to collect the weapons off of the bandits. These would sell nicely to Adrianne. Spare septims clink in her satchel against cut jewels and rings.

"Bad people who don't like werewolves. So they don't like us either."

Isra laughs, snatching a necklace off the neck of a female. "Farkas, most people don't like werewolves."

Exhaling in frustration, Farkas grunts, "We're not like... I can't tell you all about it. Vilkas can though, he's not an icebrain like me."

Icebrain. It prodded the forefront of Isra's mind like a dagger. As she sheathes a new Silver greatsword, she hears Farkas rise and exhale a few times before picking up his weapon. He was still her friend and she still had a trial to pass, afflicted with a daedra's curse or not, Isra was required to retrieve this fragment of Wuuthrad, if anything, for her honor. "You're not any more of an icebrain than Vilkas."

"You should tell him that," Farkas smiles, approaching her softly and running his hands over one another.

Isra looks into his eyes, still devilish. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. "I'm sorry about the other night, Farkas. It wasn't right."

Smirking, he snags a stray curl and snakes it into her braid. "I'm not."

"Your trial is not over." He adds, continuing down the now open gates, motioning for her to follow. Timidly, she joins him.

They continued to trawl through the cave, fighting off the Silver Hand and dragrs. She took charge when it came to the spider den, Farkas shrieking like a small girl when he saw the beginnings of the thickened webs on the floors. Isra was covered in the sticky, pungent blood of the large spiders, but had taken the opportunity to dip her arrows in their venom sacks.

Nearing a new room that hummed with energy, Farkas warned, "Get ready for a fight."

The fragment of Wuuthrad, twisted and gnarled with the visage of a snow elf came into her grasp and the entire dungeon unraveling. The lid of the crypt shook open, Farkas hollering, "Watch out for the shouts!" As he readied himself to take on the draugr along the sidelines.

From the sarcophargus emerged a draugr adorned with a twisted, wicked helmet. Before he could rise from his resting place, Isra peppered him with as many arrows as possible. From the mouth, a haggard, "FUS RO!" knocked her off of her feet, rattling the dust around her. Urns rustled from there ledges split open on the floor. Those were shouts, she supposed as she clambered to her feet and drew her greatsword.

It was a challenge defeating the draugr and Isra found herself in a death predicament too many times for her liking. Farkas tried to assist her but she denied him. "This is my trial!" She yelled, "I will take him down!" There would be no question of her worthiness, even if she stupidly died in this crypt.

As she was about to call in Farkas, the creature took a knee. The undead was as exhausted as she was. Panting, Isra cleaves through the helmet with a rain of sparks and a satisfying wetness of contact. She kicks down her oponent and removes her greatsword, finally taking to lopping the creatures head off as it gave a final grunt of pain before the bones disconnect signaling its death.

Isra collapses to the ground and cheers, tears welling up in her eyes as she turns to face the dashed wall before her. Fingers trace the ordered, ancient language. Farkas teems with pride for his new shield sister.

Isra turns around and she blacks out momentarily, her eyes refocusing on the wall. Delusionally exhausted, she felt like she should know what the words mean, but she couldn't understand them-- like a face you know but not the name. "I've never seen them like that!" Farkas smiles. "Maybe you're the Dragonborn..."

"That was also quite impressive for a whelp."

In her haze of battle, Farkas offers her his waterskin which she gulps down. Labored spurts of orange magic envelop her body as her chest still rises and falls dramatically. Isra laughs, her limbs beginning to shake from adrenaline, "My sister is the Dragonborn, Farkas."

Her demeanor cools and the ribbons of orange light dissipate in the stale air of the tomb. What should've been a source of pride for her was pain. Farkas knew the Dragonborn, a Companion that flitted through and left with the next opportunity. "I'll always exist in her shadow, so I decided to not be her sister at all. My father did too and told me he wouldn't have me at his head when he burned..."

Farkas sits next to her, throwing a lazy arm around her shoulder that she instantaneously removes. He noticed that Isra couldn't be consoled and that shut her off from many. "Please don't tell anyone."

Farkas nods, "I promise."

~~

Covered in the blood, sweat, and dust of her accomplishments, Isra limps to training yard alongside Farkas, torches and torchbugs defiantly protesting the inky summer night. Standing at the precipice, Isra leaned against a beam and took in the members of the Circle with less trust than when she had left this morning.

Kodlak booms with his fatherly voice, "Brothers and Sisters of the Circle, today we welcome a new soul into our mortal fold. Isra-- this woman has endured, has challenged, and has shown her valor. Who will speak for her?"

Farkas steps forward, a grin on his dirty, sweat caked face, "I stand witness to the courage of the soul before us."

Her eyes traveled along the faces of the Circle. Emotionless, stoic as she beamed. Isra was positively glowing under the light of torches that unraveled into the summer night. It was hard to look away from her because hers was a face belonging to a life covered in honey and riches. "Would you raise your shield in her defense?"

"I would stand at her back, that the world might never overtake us."

She shakes, the flame she held wavering with fatigue. "And would you raise your sword in her honor?"

"It stands ready to meet the blood of her foes."

"And would you raise a mug in her name?"

"Just give me the chance," laughter betrayed the stony visage of the Circle.

With a wholesome smile, Kodlak mustered, "Then the judgement of the circle is complete. Her heart beats with fury and courage that have united the Companions since the days of distant green summers. Let it beat with ours, that the mountains may echo and our enemies may tremble at the call..."

"It shall be so," The say in unision, breaking off to congratulate the weak Isra. Her body aches in fatigue from carrying the pack, from fighting, from the exhaustion of emotions she exposed herself to today. Ria was drawing her bath and Isra was sure that she'd strip on the way down the stairs she was so eager to jump into dragon's breath ladden water.

Kodlak walks to her last, Vilkas and Farkas trailing behind and discussing the trial. "You're one of us now. I trust you won't disappoint."

"No sir... I won't. I just expect the truth."

Kodlak dips his head in a sincere nod, grasping Isra's hand in between two of his own. "Who knows that the Companions are werewolves?"

Vilkas's head darts from his brother to Kodlak, his enhanced hearing picking up on the newblood's conversation. "Farkas! What did you do?"

"I see you've been allowed to know some secrets before your appointed time. No matter," he reassures both her and Vilkas in the distance, "Yes it is true. Not every Companion, though. The newbloods certainly don't know. Vignar, Tilma, and Danica know. Only members of the Circle share the blood of the beast. Some take to it more than others."

"What about you, Kodlak?" Isra bites her lower lip, knowing the answer before she asks it.

"Well," he exhales, "I'm growing old. My mind turns towards the horizon. To Sovngarde. I worry that Shor won't call an animal to glory as he would a true Nord warrior. Living as beasts draws our souls closer to the Daedric Lord Hircine. Some may prefer an eternity in his Hunting Grounds, but I crave the fellowship of Sovngarde."

Isra nods, her father probably feeling the same way, though he certainly didn't carry the burden of beastblood. "Then we must find the cure," she states with glassy eyes.

Kodlak squeezes her hand before letting go of it. The strength of spirit that carried this woman with a fatigued body was tangible in her devotion and action. Though Kodlak knew that the bits of herself that she hid away hindered her abilities, Isra embodied a boldness and devotion that he hadn't seen in the order in a long while. She didn't ask if there was a cure, she demanded that the cure be found. What faith that babes offered a dying old man!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would y'all want more focus on interpersonal relationships like Vilkas/Isra/Farkas/Olfina/Jon, more Isra family drama (it's about time we see what her dragonborn sister is up to, huh?), and would you like me to omit some questline stuff? Thank you all for so much feedback and love for the story! I really appreciate it. 
> 
> Also, a sneak peak of the next chapter! (which should be up soon, all I have to do it edit it.)
> 
> He respected her for unwavering in whatever notions she had about lycanthropy, and he could only suspect that they were negative. 
> 
> "I've earned your training."


	8. Chapter 8

Metal clambers against wood, and he's called from his book to a defiant Isra. Vilkas scanned the helmet he had heard Farkas and the other whelps murmur wildly about during dinner, surprisingly neutral concerning her presence. He could sense Isra's heartbeat, steady, but faltering in a distrust of his nature. He respected her for unwavering in in her preconceptions concerning lycanthropy, and he could only suspect that they were negative. "I've earned your training," Isra flatly demands. 

Vilkas examines the Old Nordic helmet, the spires twisting towards the skies. There was a stench about it. Patches of undead grime lined the inside of the helmet that laid untouched and unroused for millennia. His fingers run along the seam where she had struck down with enough force to split the iron. "Impressive, but it doesn't say anything other than you hit the helmet hard."

Annoyance rolls off of her in sheets, painting a slight grin on Vilkas's face. "Then teach me how to do something else." 

He finally glances up, morning sun filtering through untamed hair, the slope of her hip eclipsing the orange orb rising above the plains to heat the earth below. Swallowing, he drums his fingers and can't find a reason to deny her. Perhaps it would be good for him as well. His hip ached to move, Vilkas having been relegated to his books and studies of their curse lately rather than clearing bandit caves and fetching heirlooms for coin. "Fine. Let me gather my things." 

Aela frowned, lines settling into a battle worn face as she nudges Farkas from his lunch. Vilkas had returned from downstairs in his practice leathers, light and airy for the summer, a dull greatsword leaving a faint indentation in the fine dirt. "Vilkas does not play nice with his trainees," Aela warns, squinting her eyes against the sun. 

"Neither do bandits," Isra retorts, moodily chewing on a portion of leeks. 

Responding with a smirk, Aela watches the woman's form as she tried to decide which hand on the greatsword to lead with as she practiced in the yard before Vilkas began to train her. With a tankard of mulled wine leftover from last night, her smirk cements into her face. The bear she wanted to stalk and kill would have to wait, because this interaction between Vilkas, Isra, and Farkas, who sat and watched with an intensity that surpassed Aela's amusement, was going to be far more intriguing than a smelly beast. 

Vilkas can't help but suppress a laugh as Isra leads with her left hand atop her right, her crouched position suggesting she was a hunchback. "Let's start."

Approaching her, he knocks into her with his hip, sending her crumpling to the ground with an audible oof. "Get your stance right so someone big like me can't come knock you over so easily."

Isra brushes the dirt off of her thighs, annoyance permeating the field. "Plant your feet into the ground and extend your spine. And for the sake of Akatosh, lead with your right hand."

"Lead?"

Vilkas takes her right hand and places it atop of her left. "Yes, lead with your right hand."

Isra plants her soft, doe skinned boots into the dirt, elongating her spine as if a string had pulled her taut. She glowered at Vilkas, but was receptive to his teaching nonetheless. "Women carry their power in their thighs," he states, "Men in their arms. Remember that."

"Now," he licks his lips together, "Try to attack me."

Isra responds with only a nod, they circle each other, Isra occasionally correcting her form. Finally, with her back to the ripe sun, she aims for the gap between his cuirass and his hip. She even manages to hit him with the dull steel, eyes darting to his face immediately as she makes contact with the skin, wondering if the dull thud would prompt his true nature to emerge. 

Vilkas could sense this slight uptick in the beating of her heart and it hurt his soul. Of course she was terrified. Not only was he superior to her, but also a beast. However, the same beast didn't keep her away from Farkas. With an artful and effortless flick of his wrist, the sword wedges itself between Isra's grip and her blade, dragging to Vilkas before he bears down and sends the blade to the ground. 

He loops a free hand under leather straps and throws her to the ground, but not before she grabs the blade of his sword and attempts to twist his grip away. This makes Vilkas chuckle as he sends her to the ground again. 

Isra seethes, clambering for her training sword and returning to her position. Her scent whips around with her hair-- cinnamon, dragon's tongue, and cloves all meshing to a spicy aftertaste in Vilkas's mouth. She was maddening! "Spiteful. But without skill, you're just as good as dead."

"Again." Vilkas states, his smile as wide as Farkas's on the sidelines. Isra attempts to circle around Vilkas again to the optimal position, but he doesn't allow her, striking her left side. Instinctively, she jumps back to Vilkas's pleasure. Instead of permitting her to make mistakes, he charges her and swats her to her feet with the dull sword, a whoosh of air exiting her lungs...

"You asshole... I hadn't attacked you yet!"

Vilkas extends a hand to Isra, a bit guilty by what he had done. After all, she wouldn't learn much if he tired her too quickly. She looks at the hand and shakes her head violently, getting up herself and charging Vilkas. 

She manages to keep up the spar with him for several minutes, with the sounds of metal on metal ringing in the yard and echoing off of the centuries old stones. If anything, Vilkas was impressed by her agility. Sweat beaded his brow as he met each of her swings and disrupted her attempts to disarm him. Though the practice swords were as sharp as a lump of butter, they had a certain weight to them that knocked the air from the lungs when they struck the skin. 

He finally subdues Isra, knocking her sword to the ground as she decides to jump back. Both of their breathing taxed, hers from ferocity and his from being out of practice for so long, he warns, "You shouldn't... Jump... Back."

He sits on the ledge of the porch, wiping his face down with a rag he kept around his waist. Isra joins him, getting her breathing under control as she wipes away the perspiration with her hands. Vilkas takes a large swig from his waterskin, smiling as he offers her his and she timidly takes it. "You should try to meet the blade or jump from the swing."

"I did jump from the swing," she immediately retorts.

Vilkas draws the blade from his belt loop, dented with use. "If you jump away from a long blade like this, the attacker can still reach you. And disembowel you. Skewer you... Whatever," he struggles for words as her perspiration and scent hangs in the thick summer air. How lucky his brother was to dig into her thighs... To grip the waist padded with muscle and an attractive padding of fat that softened her. If only to inhale and exhale her warmth. "Jump in the direction the swing is heading. Or better yet, meet the swing."

Isra returns the waterskin, her honeyed scent wafting as she returns to her stance, completely recovered. It reminded VIlkas just how long it had been since he had been in the yard, or even cleaning out caves and bandit lairs. Not giving her much time to react, Vilkas charges Isra, swatting at her sides and pleased by her receptiveness. He barreled past her when she sidestepped his swing, eliciting a growl from Vilkas. 

Her antics sated and enraged the beast. Steel whistled as it advanced towards Isra, Isra meeting Vilkas's attack with a backswing. She crept to a defensive stance, evaluating her enemy. Metal thuds against his chest, bashing against Vilkas's stomach as he staggers to the right, swinging at Isra's hip with force. 

She clatters to the ground harder than her sword, Farkas rousing from his perch and glaring at his brother, Aela biting her lip and observing the newblood's actions. 

"Are you alright?" Vilkas huffs, watching the girl struggle to her feet. Isra wobbles to her feet, stretching out and recovering nicely, the tension dissipating into the thick air of summer as he strikes the back of his knee with enough force to send him down...

"Aggh," he grunts, turning around to rise as she beats against his chest. Metal against metal rings loudly so close to his ear, her body drawing closer to Vilkas as she attempts again to disarm him. "You don't have the skill to do that yet, little bird..."

He notches between the handle and the blade, able to wrench the blade from her hands to her frustration. His knees and grasp met her chest, knocking her to the ground for a final time. Vilkas can't help but release his suppressed grin of pride when he approaches her, hand offered to help her rise to her feet. She places it in his, and he lifts her up. "That was a good start," he grips her shoulder, a brightness flooding her eyes. 

"You aren't going to give me your leathers to oil after this, right?" Isra nudges his side, and like a hot iron, her touch burrows into his skin. There was a certain pleasure in the padding of her hips meeting his leathers, but it was overruled by personal honor.

Vilkas musters a grin.  
~~  
Pain radiated from muscles strained after weeks of no rest. Surely, Isra found each strike easier each day she trained, but she had not rested in the week following her trial. That is why she slumped over Ria's shoulder that evening, whimpering every other step as she drags her downstairs. "Isra. You have to," Ria pleads with her, "I can show you how to apply it, it isn't a big deal..."

"I'm fine. You're overreacting!" 

Trembling, her hands throb with a distinct, numb pain. “It happens to everyone Isra, you’re overreacting.” Ria drags her towards Vilkas’s room, knocking lightly and beckoning Isra to stay in her place. The pain was so intense, Isra went slack and submitted to her fate, tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks.   
Vilkas answers, pulling aside his door. An eyebrow perches, and he regards the two women at his door, “Aye. Ria, what’s wrong?” He asks softly, showing a certain tenderness that unnerved Isra. 

“Isra has overworked herself.” Ria unravels herself from Isra, but not before extending Isra’s arm towards Vilkas forcibly. 

Vilkas takes Isra’s hands, tracing the bulging joints and presses into depression in the center of her palm. Jerking away, Isra yelps in agony, her joints fiery and puncturing her reserved nature. “Come in,” he merely states, bitterness subsides into fatigue, his nature gentle if a bit studious. Ria offers her a supportive smile and Isra enters Vilkas’s room and he closes the door. “How many healing potions have you had today?” He begins, searching among the shelves for a cedar box he kept his ointments in. 

"Enough," she bites back, massaging her palms in vain. 

"Aye. Remember that I'm doing you a favor," Vilkas returns her callousness, pointing to the disheveled bed scattered with books, "Please, sit.”

When she falls into the linen, sandalwood and musk rise from the fibers, linen scratching the underside of her thighs. Glass vials and bottles jangle together and against the wood as he kneels before her, turning her palms face up. He examines them and chuckles, running his finger over a line of particular sensitivity. “I half expected this the way you’ve been hacking away at me,” he chuckles, uncorking a green glass vial. Wafting in the air, the particularly strong smelling oil burned her nose, and soon, her skin with a cooling sensation. 

She exhales in relief and pain simultaneously. Her inflamed joints seemingly deflated, but she continued to breath through her mouth evenly as Vilkas rubs in the oil. “Aye, it’s strong, isn’t it?”

Nodding, she instinctively curls the ends of her fingers but yelps in pain as she does so, unfurling the limbs slowly as she allows Vilkas to apply more oil to the center of her palms. Tension built between them. Either from training, his comments, or her and Farkas, Isra felt that distance was the best policy with Vilkas. Yet, she manages a smile when he emerges with an amber vial. "You're a talkative one, aren't you?"

She’s called from her haze of fatigue and pain. “I’m in a bit of pain,” Isra responds, “Even when I smack the bowstring against my arm, it doesn’t hurt this bad.” The reddish liquid separating atop of the oil still seeping into her skin, a certain fire causing her to gasp as it made contact and sept into her blisters, open and raw on her shredding hands. “Why is it that I get thrown around and you don’t throw Ria around when you train with her?”

Vilkas laughs, shaking his head as he places slight pressure onto her wrists, massaging in the fire essence. "Do you think I didn't throw Ria around when she first started?" He pauses the weaving motion of his fingers, peering upwards to her accusatory, narrowed eyes. "You're right. Ria doesn't have the same pent up energy that you do."

He continues his work, grimaces at the knots and tears he could feel underneath her skin. "How'd you come here?" She mutters, her heart rate slowing, her anxiety fading. 

"To hear Farkas tell it, our father raised us here as happy pups, running around biting knees. I love my brother, but his brains are not his strong suit," Vilkas strings fabric across her hands in a tight bind. "We were brought here by Jergen. Whether he was our father or not, I don't care. He left to fight in the Great War and never came back. So he's not my problem anymore. We've been here as long as either of us can remember, though. So try to show some respect."

"Have I not shown respect?" Isra asks, her eyes genuine as Vilkas unbinds her hands and adds more fire essence to her palms, letting the linen wrap go slack. 

Vilkas grapples with that for a moment, his knees aching from either age or the pains of his curse. He rises, extending his back to a satisfying succession of cracks. He paces for a few moments, Isra’s eyes following him as he retrieves a new linen roll. “You have respected me by being a diligent student, you just have a sharp tongue.”

He sits next to her on the bed, beginning where he left off with her wraps. “I understand,” Vilkas bites his lips, her scent of cinnamon and dragon’s tongue was dampened by sweat of labor, a salty scent that lingered in her linens. “This curse makes me so irritable.”

He heard her heart skip beats, accelerating as she realized she had sunken into a monster. VIlkas couldn’t blame her reaction, but immediately felt the need to bite back in his rejection. “I forget that there are werewolves…”

Vilkas hushes her, wrapping even tighter, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’d best keep your tongue.”

Isra looks up, waiting until Vilkas met her eyes. When he finally lifts his head, he meets her green eyes, widened with the same anger he was subject to-- all encompassing waves of anger that consumed them both, but also drove them to action. “What brought you here?”

“A funeral,” she flex her hands with a mere wince, resting them in her lap. “My brother died in the war. I came home and decided to stay,” Isra continues to stare into his eyes, ruffling Vilkas with their depth. 

“Do you have family here?”

“No,” Isra lies, wondering why he made the effort to be vulnerable with her when she couldn’t bother to return the favor.   
“That’s strange. A letter came for you today from the Thane of Markarth,” Vilkas leans over on his desk and plucks a thick letter and places them in her wrapped hands. Isra rubs the tips of her fingers over the edges of the letter, a thick wax seal stamped in the likeness of a dragon with two heads. His hand rests on her knee where it fell. 

Vilkas saw how she bit her lip in confusion, eyes furrowing together as a stain of red painted the high points of her face. Heart fluttering faster, Vilkas’s lips curled at the corners. She had lied. And his hand was on her knee. Questions clawed at his tongue, all sequestered when she rises, thanks him, and leaves him confused and lonely.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Harvest Festival and the Gildergreen. This is a Vilkas heavy chapter!

The golden summer began to recede below the peaks of daunting, black mountains, fading into the deep reds of autumn. The Gildergreen littered its few remaining leaves in the town square. Summer had been a time of immense growth for Isra, her arms bulged with new muscle and her mind raced with technique. Her eagerness to spar with Vilkas wore the man out, and whatever energy she had left over was spent at Battle-Born farm working the fields. Black lines of fertile soil were ever present under her nails along with the sweat of the brow. 

 

Nights were early and short, often ending with a book lying atop her chest and her neck contorted to next day's soreness. The routine sated Isra, but it lacked fulfillment. She understood how Vilkas became so cross. His tenure at the Companions lacked the honor of true battle. The Companions lacked action without coin or personal gain. 

 

It is why she held a red leaf in her hands, intently studying the browning around the edges and listening to the priestess. She had agreed to help Danica restore the Gildergreen. The bark warps and curls in on itself along the fire line, gnarling the tree to an otherworldly figure. A family of Altmer pass by, eyes diverted save for the male who stared directly into Isra's eyes and held the gaze. His smooth hand guides the back of his child with impossibly pointed ears. "I'll get Nettlebane for you," Isra's head tucks, curls spilling onto her collarbones. 

 

"Your spirit is strong. Kynareth's winds will guide your path. It's held in a Hagraven nest called Orphan Rock," Danica rambles, adding that she would mark it on Isra's map before she left on her noble deed. 

 

Isra had heard of Hagravens, their hunched, sinewy bodies and their old magics. It's why she found herself perusing Vilkas's library later that afternoon. She was trying to educate herself before she faced them in Orphan Rock. Biting the corner of her lip, she listened to Vilkas's concerns, "You don't hold the sword like you're comfortable with it. You really ought to get Eorlund to balance your blade," he quips over his shoulder, preoccupied at his desk with even rarer tomes and the business ledger. 

 

Strands of hair dipped around his bare face like ink strokes on paper, candlelight highlighting his jawbone and its scarce scars. Isra had become so used to him, so accustomed to his demeanor and his moods, so accustomed to his perfectionism, anxiety, and his studious nature. "Yeah, it's why I want to transition to a short blade sometime soon."

 

"You're doing so well with the Greatsword..."

 

"Obviously not well enough," Isra looks over her shoulder, smirking before plucking a book that detailed the creatures of Skyrim. Save for Hagravens. She exhales loudly, turning to Vilkas and interupting a task he wasn't focusing on anyways. "What do you know about Hagravens?"

 

"I know enough to leave them alone, that's for sure," Vilkas reclines in his chair, "The Forsworn consider them matriarchs of sorts..."

 

"I need to know how to kill them," Isra sits herself down on the edge of his bed, the sheets rustled about. 

 

"I suppose you'd be better off taking them out with a bow. Why do you need to know?"

 

Isra shrugs her shoulders, a stack of semi-related texts lying in her lap. Vilkas pauses from his work and stares at her face. Perhaps it was her training, but her face was rounder and less harsh then when she first arrived. "I am helping Danica."

 

"Hopefully not for free," Vilkas mutters, swiveling in his chair to face the woman. "Free doesn't buy mead for the table."

 

"It's none of your business," Isra snaps back, her lips drawing to a thin line. If her nostrils could breathe fire, Vilkas was sure he'd be singed, as her intensity rivaled his own some days. 

 

"It doesn't sound like business at all. It sounds like charity."

 

"It's more honorable than fetching a plate," Isra stands, placing the bundle of books under her arm. "Or hunting bears and sabre cats."

 

"And what would you know about honor, Isra?" Vilkas folds his arms across his chest, the thump of revelry sounding above them. "You're a _liar_!" Vilkas spits out that last word like poison. 

 

Isra pauses, advancing towards Vilkas calmly, retaining poise and dignity as she states, "And I'm not ashamed of that." She pivots and walks into the door frame, leaning against the chipped wood. "I'll have these books back to you in a couple of days."

 

She begins to shift her weight to return to the whelps' corner before Vilkas stands up and follows her into the hallway. "Isra, wait..."

 

"What?" She turns around, Kodlak in her periphery surveying the two chase each other around in circles. Kodlak thought the woman fancied Farkas, and he hoped so, but perhaps she was one to fancy problems. 

 

"I'm sorry. Let me help you with the Hagravens, I need to get out of..."

 

"No," Isra firmly responds. "I..."

 

"I want to do right by you," Vilkas coherently and concisely exclaims before the heat rises in his cheeks. He sensed Isra's heart beating faster, his own matching her pace. She shakes her head, each curl bobbing with the simple movement. 

 

"Then do right. Stop apologizing."

 

~~

 

Isra returned to Whiterun to find Olfina stringing up banners in preparation for the Harvest Festival. Caked blood covered her face, a jagged line carving through the leather across her chest, crusted with blood, dirt, and leaves. A pack bulges on her back, her hair dirty and clumped into three distinct tangles. Olfina spots her friend from above. "Isra, are you okay?" She calls down, lowering the horse banner. Jon's attention is called from Anoriath's meat stand, smiling when he regards his future wife and his friend. 

 

"Just tired," Isra croaks. The hagravens had been relentless, as evidenced by the singed ends of her hair that poked out of her cowl, but a challenging fight. She trudged to Warmaidens to sell her wares. 

 

~~

 

Isra lingers in the whelps quarters, packing her knapsack for her upcoming trip to the Eldergleam. She remembers when her mother and father took her and all of her siblings to the Eldergleam, it was summer and her father killed an elk on the way home. At the time, she was amazed at the thickets of roots and life that graced the walls, slick with sap and condensation. The cave had honeyed air. Butterflies meandering in the air flocked with bees and torchbugs. Her brothers scaled the roots before they were scolded for their irreverence. 

 

Her fingers trace the large cut across her chest covered in bandages. The air around her was filled with laughter and summer wines. Jorrvaskr was empty save for her and Kodlak. Her body still aches from her spar with the Hagravens, but her heart longs to go take part in the Harvest Festival. It was always her favorite as a child. Her mother would make bread sweetened with ash yams and covered in brown sugar when she had time away from her courtly duties. Her father would permit them to stay up late to watch the dancing and drinking. 

 

She hadn’t put on her armor yet, so she feels the pull of the revelry. Piety and Maurice would have to wait until tomorrow. Yellow banners zig zag across the town along with canvas lanterns, some of which have caught fire due to the winds rolling off of the mountains. Isra shivers under a summer linen as she passes through the bumping of hips, friendly conversation, and a reluctant hope for the upcoming winter months. After all, the realities of war were all too tangible for neutral Whiterun. Idolaf was not a reliable source of wisdom, however, he is not wrong when he says "Everyone must pick a side." The Stormcloaks were rumored to strike after the snow melts. There was a subliminal reality that next year the same people would not gather in this exact city and that fueled antics even more so than normal. An arm is thrown around Isra, interrupting her thoughts and causing her to screech, turning to see Jon kneeled over, guffawing at her reaction. Isra herself laughs before giving him a hug. “You clean up well! Let’s find you some wine…”

 

Isra shakes her head, the joy of the evening infectious as the mere mention of drink causes her appetite to engulf her. She craved whatever meat that lingered in the golden haze of the festival. “Aren’t you supposed to be playing music tonight?”

 

Jon bites his lip nervously. “Not tonight. Are you saying that Farkas’s drumming and Mikael don’t suit your sensibilities?”

 

“Oh, how could they not?” She peers upwards from their perch at the well to see that a few stragglers were actually lazing on the rooftops. She gestures upwards and points out the figures. “Elrindir… Ysolda…”

 

“Look at Idolaf!” He snickers at his brother dancing wildly and rather close to the edge of the roof line.

 

“... Saadia and Vilkas!” Isra covers her mouth, staring at the two tangled up in one another, both obviously drunk. “Wow, Saadia!” She exclaims, giggling wildly as she watches the two talk with one another, their foreheads pressed together with candlelight dancing off of the peaks of Saadia’s golden dark skin. She wonders what they were talking about, as Saadia didn’t entertain warrior’s tales, however, when the warrior looked like Vilkas perhaps her tastes changed. 

 

“Yeah, I feel bad for Saadia,” Jon squeezes Isra’s shoulder. “Have you had anything to eat?”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because the food is amazing,” Jon answers. 

 

“No, why do you feel bad for Saadia?”

 

Jon raises an eyebrow, his arm flopping to his side as a cold breeze sweeps through the late night. “The way those twins sleep around, I wouldn’t be surprised if Saadia takes her lunch with Danica in a week.”

 

“Oh really? Vilkas never leaves Jorrvaskr though,” Isra glances back over at the two, tongues attacking each other’s mouths. Probably drunkenly. Isra couldn’t imagine him being pleasant without a few drinks. 

 

“Why do you care so much? Please tell me you aren’t interested,” Jon leads her closer to the Bannered Mare, his own stomach rumbling and his walking off kilter from the ale he held lazily in his hands. 

 

“Of course not!” Isra defends herself as the barge through the crowd. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind it, but I’m not going out of my way…”

 

“Aye, so I take it Farkas wasn’t exactly your type then?”

 

“Olfina told you that?” Isra loses whatever appetite she mustered, her eyes lock on a specific silver haired barmaid with fire behind her teeth. Isra seethes. 

 

“Of course, I suppose Ysolda knows as well,” Jon shrugs, “But we all kind of know because Farkas isn’t the best at keeping secrets.”

 

Anger boils inside of Isra. Olfina had betrayed her, her outline was red as her eyes darted around the bar. She was ready to round up Maurice and leave for Eldergleam Sanctuary. Isra touches Jon’s shoulder and presses a coin purse into John’s hands when he turns around. “Get me a bottle of wine and a crostada.”

 

Isra waits for Jon on the outside of the Bannered Mare, her heart beating fast and her teeth grinding. It was time to leave Whiterun. The Companions provided a life relegated to monotony and she didn’t see advancement in sight. She couldn’t fetch plates, lost damsels, and hunt varmits her entire life. There was no honor in that. Around her waist her fingers run over the carvings of Nettlbane absent mindedly until Jon comes back. 

 

Jon hands her the wine first, and Isra thanks him. “I think I need to go back. I’m not feeling well.”

 

“Oh come on Isra!” Jon tugs at her free hand, dragging her into the party. “You never know, you may find someone…”

 

_So you and Olfina can betray my trust again?_ Isra quietly thinks to herself as she mechanically dances. She supposed that when Jon drifted away that she’d sneak back up to Jorrvaskr. Her eyes divert back up to the roof, Saadia and Vilkas practically on top of one another. Rolling her eyes, Isra listens to Jon and Ria talking, about shields? Perhaps. Isra didn’t care and found herself climbing the steps back up to Jorrvaskr with the neck of a wine bottle in her fist. Her knuckles whiten. 

 

She was considering taking off in the night. Maurices and Danica’s prayers ought to have protected them. Trudging down to the basement, she slips the necessities in her pack. _A book on Hagravens Vilkas fetched her. Cheese. Rope. Patching leather_. Perhaps she should start praying more, she thought to herself. Perhaps praying would resolve her inner turmoil that churned against her insides and threatened to spill out and ruin her life. Olfina. Jon. Farkas. Vilkas. She slips an Amulet of Kynareth over her head, tucking in into her undershirt. She wasn’t faithful enough to enjoy the Companions, just like she lacked the faith to enjoy the divine. Isra turns Nettlebane over in her hands again, wondering how such a vile instrument could ever be constructed, and wondering why she felt so inherently attached to it. She felt vile. She felt like a leech.

 

Her shield-siblings wandered into Jorrvaskr, slowly, but with a haze of glee surrounding them and the stench of alcohol imprinting the air around them. Isra began to strap herself into her leather armor, now studded with small metal plates and mended along her still healing wound. Danica would surely send her off with some potions. 

 

With Maurice in tow, she wanders through the city, the stragglers of the party still swaying to the tired rhythm Mikael musters. Despite his lack of talent, at least he could play all night, and manage to keep everything smooth. Thick fingers wrap around Isra’s wrist and her name shortly follows. Drawing Nettlebane in her anger, she pivots to see a beaming Farkas. “Hey, where have you been?”

 

“Preparing for my trip,” Isra frowns, wondering if Farkas could even sense her annoyance in his state of merriment. Lowering the dagger, she sees Farkas’s eyes twinkle with a memory, “Vilkas was looking for you not too long ago. There, he’s over there,” Farkas points to Fralia’s jewelry stall where the obviously drunk man sat perched around a group of far more intoxicated men. “Vilkas!”

 

“Farkas, no,” Isra rips away her hand, tightening her cowl as if she could hide. “Seriously, I need to be going…”

 

“Oh, you’ll be fine, he’s in a great mood. I’ll see you at Jorrvaskr," He walks away, winking at ISra before his drunken brother approaches her.

 

Vilkas rises and stumbles over to Isra, his hand resting on the side of Arcadia’s shop where John usually leans against. “Isra!” He smiles, his feet shuffling, trying to find balance. “I’ve been looking for you!”

 

“What is it,” Isra pinches the bridge of her nose. Closing her eyes, she tries to drown out the scent of alcohol that soaked Vilkas by breathing through her mouth.

 

He takes in her form, his eyes widening in shock. The golden glow emanating from the braziers made her holy. Untouchable even. How could a dog ever aspire to her? Mistreat her? Throw her in the dirt? “You’re leaving?”

 

Isra nods her head, hand falling to her hip as she takes a deep breath. “Yes.”

 

“Please don’t,” he tries to take her hand and she grunts and jerks away, placing her free hand on the hilt of a dagger fastened around a belt. “You’re still hurt,” he grabs onto her shoulder and points at the bandage that runs beneath her under tunic. “You’ll fall all over if something attacks.”

 

"And?"

 

"I can't let you get hurt."

 

Isra shrugs out from beneath him. “Gods Vilkas... You think that you can protect me forever, huh? Stop! You won't dictate everything I do! I am capable.” She hushes under her breath, not wanting to cause a scene but fearing that it would escalate to that.

 

“I don’t dictate you!" He argues, his hands reaching out for her agains she ducks away from him with more grace than his state of drunkenness would allow him to counteract. “Please, Isra…”

 

“No!” Isra shakes her head defiantly, her eyes wide as septims as she regards the man wolf. “Your concern is insulting. As if I couldn’t make my own…”

 

He wraps his arms around her and she screeches, her face reddening as he begins, “I don’t want you to leave…” Ulfberth approaches them, ripping Vilkas away and holding him in his drunken stpor away from Isra. The leaner twin couldn’t hold his liquor like he had in his youth. 

 

Isra’s fury had reached a crescendo and in a split second of questionable judgement, she socked Vilkas in the nose. After she drew back her arm, seeing the blood and the contortion as well as the concern from the townspeople. She turns on her foot to run to the gates, only turning back once to see Vilkas crumbled over on his knees vomitting up the poison he guzzled down the entire evening.

 

_ Embarrassing _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have wild plans for what happens at Eldergleam. Also, Isra's sister will be making an appearance soon.
> 
> Also, sorry for the delay in getting out this chapter. I'm writing this as I go with very little structure or plans for what happens except for a few pivotal scenes that I build up to. I try to make this as realistic as possible. Isra is not the Dragonborn, she doesn't breeze through archery and swordsmanship like someone with the Dragonblood does... Neither will she receive the overpowering treatment that the Dragonborn does as I didn't agree with that in game. Like, you're telling me that Vilkas wasn't supposed to be Harbinger? Really? The Dragonborn is the Harbinger, the savior of the world, the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, and the Archmaster of the College? Sorry, hard pass.
> 
> That being said, it also takes Isra a while to heal. 
> 
> Thanks so much for your continued support and comments. Please leave comments! I'll try my best to incorporate your suggestions and I love hearing from my readers. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A filler chapter of sorts. 
> 
> Comments are always appreciated! Enjoy :).

The sanctuary was beyond her comprehension. The dew reflected colors she hadn’t seen so intensely before. Air around her hummed with life, teeming with vibrant color, smell, and texture. It felt sinful to have to puncture the roots with Nettlebane to warp the tree to her desires, as Asta had warned her.

Sun filtered in through the crevices in the cave, disinfecting the normal dinginess of caves. The air was fresher, more clear, as if Kynareth herself had filtered the air of the volcanic tundra through cheesecloth. Her fingers ran over the smooth bark, ancient and unwavering as she attempts to scale the roots. After managing to peer over the tops of the roots, her grip falters and she falls on her hip, barely missing the rocky outcrop and instead landing in the dirt. “I’m going to have to use it,” she mumbles under her breath, retrieving the blade from her belt.

Maurice grabs her hand, holding the wrist like a vice, “Kynareth does not favor those who use violence to manipulate…”

Isra shoves him away, her eyes feral and unrefined unlike the cave surrounding them. Her teeth grit together and she begins to shave the bark away. The Eldergleam submits to her will as a small chunk of her drops into Isra’s outstretched hands. They both progress to the precipice of the trunk, and when they finally reach the top, Maurice once again snatches her wrist. “What!” Isra jerks away, storming up the hill, crouching into a defensive pose. “Danica needs me to get this sap. Are you going to stand in my way?”

“You would violate this marvel of Kynareth's glory to fix that half-breed stump in Whiterun? That's abominable. Barbaric.” He spits out, ascending to the base of the tree. Maurice stalks Isra, his reverence for the goddess’s beauty undermined by pious defense. “I will not allow you…  _ You!  _ A heretic undeserving of such a task! A woman of violence! Why didn't you tell me what you intended? You don’t know what you’re doing!"

“How dare you!” Isra pushes against Maurice’s chest as the man nears her, “Danica told you the details of my quest, and yet you decided to come along all the same! I will not be demeaned by a man that needs to be escorted to a tree!”

“Stand aside,” Isra follows, kneeling to dig through her pouch for her book for instructions. Maurice paces behind her, dropping to his knees and praying fervently. 

She grips Nettlebane in her hands, beginning to sice the bark at the base of the tree, whispering her own prayers and begging for forgiveness. Isra felt at peace with the situation. The closer she neared to the heart of the tree, she feels the ground thump with life. Carving a ‘U’ into the bark, Isra continues to slice deeper into the tree to affix the tap to allow the sap to flow freely. 

Concentrated, Isra’s hearing goes blank in her intense focus, placing the bottle beneath the spit as her shoulder erupts in fire. Isra whips around and witnesses the tree roots throwing Maurice against the sides of the cave. Rock crumbles and Asta’s screams pierce the sanctuary along with the stream of sap collecting at the base of the green glass bottle with each gurgle of the tree's heart. Isra’s hand reaches around and feels the base of a steel dagger with her hands. Green honey bees materialize in front of her wide eyes. Buzzing assaults her ears as her body stings with the fury of nature. She stumbles on her weak side, drawing her greatsword with a single hand before the weight of the weapon is too much for her to bear and clambers to the ground. Instead of bothering with clunky, unbalanced steel, she begins to hack away at the Spriggan with Nettlebane, in her other hand trembles flames that she sprays at the Spriggan’s chest. The celestial dew on the grass evaporates and catches fire, desecrating such a serene testament to Kynareth’s holiness. 

Whether it retreated into the mother tree, or Isra defeated the Spriggan, the gnarled wood body explodes into a cloud of green tinged honeybees. Isra whimpers, her eyes swimming with bronze and black as she crawls to the Eldergleam, and curls beneath her trunk. 

~~

Cloaked behind a thin veil of snow, his eyes shone like braziers lighting the walls of Windhelm bronze. Unwavering in the winds, the embers of his irises bruned brightly through the snow. Isra materializes, standing at the entrance to a large, Dwemer gazebo overlooking the Sea of Ghosts. She pulls the lever and exhales fire and frost, her voice echoing off of the brass bars enclosing her. Vilkas's voice calls for her, but all she sees are his eyes through the thick blankets of snow and sun. 

She wakes on the floor of Eldergleam Sanctuary, her vision gilded around the edges and her pain subsided. Everything seemed to swim in honey, the green bottle she grasped for doubling and crossing over her eyesight, pale fingers wrap around the overfilled bottle. Leather stuck together in the sap. Between the acrid sweetness and the dragonflies, death cuts through the air in the sanctuary like the knife in her back. 

Her fingers find the bark stowed in her pouch, and brings it to her lips. Chewwing, she cringes at the depth of flavors, moaning in content.

She dozes between her augmented reality and her dreams. The next bleeds into reality and she approaches a woman draped in dew perched on a branch of the Eldergleam. The Last Kiss, Isra thinks to herself, reaching for the golden woman with a goodbye on the lips. Kyne whips her away, casting her back into the sanctuary. 

“Isra?” A voice calls her name between labored breaths. Her eyes pry back open.

~~

It had been two weeks since the harvest festival, however, yellow banners still wavered among the dust. Whiterun had become brisk, the winds rolling off the plains to rattle what was left of the Gildergreen from the trees. Vilkas shrugged into a cloak of bearskin, drawing back the bowstring in futile attempts to become better equipped with distance weapons. Afterall, whether it was a result of the curse or his age, his joints stiffened in the morning and his muscles took longer to rehabilitate after a spar with the whelps. 

His eyes locked on the dead Gildergreen with a distinct shame. He regreted most of the Harvest Festival. Not Saadia, or even Ysolda, but the way he handled himself. Yet, as the days passed without Isra’s return, a certain dread stirred at his insides, he wasn’t sure that Isra hadn’t left for good, but he was sure that she’d return the sap to Danica. 

Pulling back the bowstring, another bout of shame results in his inflamed knuckles shaking. The arrow strikes an outer ring. The wax seal of the two headed dragon remained in tact inside Isra’s nightstand. Vilkas knew it was the seal of the Dragonborn. Farkas caught him trying to meld the wax back together in his room two evenings ago, resulting in a fury he completely deserved. However, it proved hunches and his brother right, Isra and Svenna were unlikely sisters. “Damn it!” The next arrow hits the wall beyond the target. 

Aela raises an eyebrow, wondering why the man was out here so early this morning, unless, that is, he hadn’t been to sleep since yesterday. “Try breathing,” Aela suggests, before returning to a rare slice of beef that steamed with warmth. Tilma really knew how to cook meat, Aela notes as her fingernails savagely halve a potato roll. The roll then dunks into the blood speckled with fat. “You’ve been an absolute bear the past several days. You haven’t taken well to absence.”

“I miss it,” Vilkas drops the bow, the aches spasming across his back. “I miss training. Ria is out fetching something. Athis is gone.”

“Isra is gone,” Aela adds. 

Vilkas narrows his eyes at her, leaning against the porch post. “Do you think she’s coming back?”

Aela shrugs her shoulders, pushing the little chunks of meat around her plate, not out of boredom or fullness, but from pent up energy. “I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. She’ll be back, though.”

“How do you know? She seemed fine with leaving her previous life,” Vilkas grits his teeth together, wondering how and why he could contain so much anger this early in the day.

“I don’t have the patience for this again,” Aela pinches the bridge of her nose, exhaling slowly, “There was a letter for you… The two-headed dragon again. I believe it is on the table.”

~~

Heat radiates from the thick stone of The Palace of the Kings. Isra lies still despite fighting through hallucinations and fever. Notices had been sent to Jorrvaskr and Danica. Hjorta leans against the warm walls, glaring from Ulfric to Wuunferth. “And the expanded capacity of Fort Amol brings…”

“Not now,” Ulfric holds a hand up to Galmar along the perimeter of the group, the General staring at the lifeless and nearly unrecognizable woman with contempt.

“Well, are we just going to stand here and do nothing?” Hjorta glowers at both Ulfric, Galmar, and Wuunferth, the last of whom seemed to agree with her. Her sister’s heart beat was strong, but she was still asleep, rendering it useless to sit around and wait for her lips to twitch, or for Wuunferth to scrape away the sap on her skin.

Wuunferth cleras his throat, also annoyed by the unprecedented barage into his space. The wounded Stormcloaks, save for the stray officer, went to the Temple of Talos. What was so special about this girl other than her sister? Perhaps her condition, but that would be more suited to Danica of Whiterun. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I do,” he smirks, “But I have work to do.”

Ulfric pauses, looking back to Hjorta with coldness that denoted his seriousness, “We can speak of war in the strategy room.”

Hjorta snorts, leaving the two men to linger around her ragdoll sister. Perhaps their father was correct, as Isra had been drawn in by the sniveling priestess in Whiterun to save her tree, barely able to preserve herself. Isra had been stabbed in the back, adding a poor judgement of character to her list of achievements. “You’ve sent for the Companions to collect her?” Hjorta asks Wuunferth, but her eyes trail to Ulfric. 

His thick fingers curls into a fist, the thu’um echoing in his voice, “This is her home. This is the city of her family!”

Hjorta snorts, “You always take things so literally,” she flits beyond the two men, “Do you think that I don’t care for her? I sent her to Whiterun. They are her family as much as she is mine.”


End file.
